Yale Daily News — September 5, 2025

Committee on trust unsure of priorities

BY BAALA SHAKYA STAFF REPORTER

A committee of professors formed by University President Maurie McInnis in the spring to determine causes of declining trust in higher education — and propose solutions to regain it — is not yet sure what to focus on, its co-chairs said in an interview.

In April, McInnis announced the creation of the Committee on Trust in Higher Education — one

of her most visible efforts yet to address declining public confidence in elite universities. McInnis previously told the News that addressing declining trust in educational institutions would be a priority during her presidency.

“We’re thinking about the question of trust in higher education in a few different ways — questions of trust between students and faculty, trust between students, faculty and administration, questions about cost and wealth and

access,” committee co-chair and history professor Beverly Gage ’94 said. “I think our biggest challenge as a committee is going to be making some choices in the end about which of these really seem to be the major priority.”

The committee spent the summer conducting background research and holding preliminary conversations on “trust in faculty and trust in classrooms,” according to co-chairs Gage and Julia Adams, a sociology professor.

WOMEN'S BASKETBALL

‘ENJOY

Moving forward, the group plans to meet weekly, host public and private events, and join student organization meetings to solicit student feedback, which Gage and Adams said will shape the committee’s priorities. According to Adams, McInnis encouraged the group “to think big and to think adventurously.” She said the committee’s approach to its work is characterized by “maximum open-

THE GRIND’

Coach wanted a winning culture. What went wrong?

BY JONAS LOESEL CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

Yale’s head women’s basketball coach mused last October about an ambitious hope for the upcoming season, something that would turn the page on two rough years: She wanted the team to win ten of its 13 games against opponents outside of the Ivy League.

“Everybody wants to feel the upward momentum, the upward trajectory that we’re building,” head coach Dalila Eshe said, apparently sitting in a car during a Zoom interview for a local radio show.

Instead, the team had its second-worst record in at least 40 years. It won just one non-conference game, its first one, and went on to lose the next 12. The Bulldogs struggled to a seventh-place finish in the Ivy League.

The team has floundered while the men’s basketball program has emerged in recent years as the crown jewel of Yale sports and an Ivy League powerhouse. The 2024-25 season marked the women’s team’s third one under Eshe and the third consecutive season of declining performance for the once-competitive Bulldogs.

After posting a 16-11 overall record and third place in Ivy League regular season play in the 2021-22 season, the team has progressively slipped to 13-14 in the 2022-23 season, 8-19 in the 202324 season and just four wins compared to 23 losses last season.

Interviews with five former players, as well as a former player’s parent and a basketball analyst who covers the team, revealed a picture of a team deeply troubled since Eshe’s arrival. Eshe has tried to implement — and has repeatedly discussed — an intense new culture for the team, but players chafed at the shakeup.

Nearly all indications suggest Eshe’s vision has backfired.

Player attrition has increased.

One player parted with the team in the spring of 2024 after a dispute with Eshe; another who quit last fall said the coach’s style fell short of her predecessor’s in leaving players “space to just be.”

Those departures and others have left the Bulldogs lacking in experienced college players, a situation on track to continue this season with one senior and six first years on a 15-member roster. The team returned last month from a swing through Europe, a rare chance to bond and compete together over the summer.

When the News first emailed Eshe for comment about the team culture in April, she wrote that she has worked to build a “positive, supportive and competitive” team.

After the News contacted Eshe again this week with a list of the complaints raised about her coaching, Yale Athletics spokesperson Sam Rubin ’95 on Wednesday pro-

vided a brief statement, attributed to Eshe, that did not address the specific allegations.

“Our record may reflect where we have been, but it does not define where we are going,” the statement

read. She added that she was committed to her players’ success and to creating “a culture of excellence that will transform this program into one of consistent competitiveness and pride.”

Alder hopefuls share goals at debate

BY ELIJAH HUREWITZ-RAVITCH AND SABRINA THALER STAFF REPORTERS

Three Yalies running to represent downtown New Haven on the Board of Alders squared off Wednesday evening in the sanctuary of First and Summerfield United Methodist Church.

Rhea McTiernan Huge ’27, Elias Theodore ’27 and Norah Laughter ’26 are each hoping to win the Ward 1 seat on the city’s 30-person legislative body. Standing behind podiums at Wednesday’s debate, they sought to prove to roughly 100 people assembled why they deserve it.

Topics at the debate, organized and moderated by the News, spanned the candidates’ backgrounds, policy visions and approaches to the Yale-New Haven relationship. The candidates rarely disagreed but were serious and determined — less jocular with one another than at Monday’s on-campus town hall event. Here are five takeaways from the evening.

Candidates argue Yale can solve New Haven’s ills In answer after answer about the problems facing the Elm City, each aldermanic hopeful brought up Yale

Chloe Edwards / Senior Photographer Editor

SEE DEBATE PAGE 5

REETI MALHOTRA STAFF REPORTER

After more than two years of fraught negotiations, a new contract between the University and Yale Police Department union seems to be on the horizon.

The Yale Police Benevolent Association, or YPBA, has been pursuing collective bargaining action for a new contract with Yale since February 2023. In June, relations between the union and the University hit a new low after all 51 union members voted to authorize a strike in response to Yale negotiators’ refusal to schedule additional negotiation sessions. No strike has occurred.

Just three months later, the circumstances are vastly different.

“We’re close,” YPBA President Mike Hall said in a phone interview on Thursday. “There are still a few issues that need to be ironed out. I'm confident that the University and the YPBA can work these out together and resolve our issues and get this contract.”

Hall declined to describe the outstanding issues.

Joe Sarno, Yale’s head of union management relations, wrote in a statement to the News on Thursday that the University’s negotiations with the police union were ongoing.

Police union talks thaw Yale formally bans

BY BAALA SHAKYA STAFF REPORTER

Yale has adopted an anti-doxxing policy, formally prohibiting the public release of private personal information intended to intimidate, threaten or retaliate against members of the Yale community.

The move came over the summer after months of advocacy by student leaders, who argued that Yale lagged behind peer institutions in protections against online harassment.

The policy — published online July 28, according to Kimberly Goff-Crews ’83 LAW ’86, Yale’s secretary and vice president for university life — classifies doxxing as a form of harassment.

The policy defines personal information whose release might constitute doxxing as “private information that the individual has not made public or has not authorized another person or organization to make public.”

The policy mentions examples of personal information including email addresses, phone numbers, home addresses and “personally identifying images, videos, or sound recordings.” Information related to public activity, such as speeches, publications or appearances at demonstrations, is excluded.

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COVID

This Day in Yale History, 1991

September 5, 1991 / Unions, Administration Prepare for Tough Negotiations

By Patro Kebriaei

The University’s latest series of cuts in dining hall facilities has exacerbated union-administration relations, setting the scene for a tough round of contract negotiations.

In less than two months, union officials and University administrators will approach the bargaining table to begin the first round of contract negotiation talks. Both contracts for Local 35, representing Yale’s 1,400 custodial and maintenance employees, and Local 34, representing the University’s 2,050 clerical and technical workers, expire Jan. 16.

PHOTO BY TIM SCHAFFER

Behind the Headline

By Kade Gajdusek, Elijah Hurewitz-Ravitch and Sabrina Thaler

It’s been 16 years since three candidates last competed for the Ward 1 alder seat. Covering the run-up to the primary election and documenting where local politics and campus debates meet has been an exciting challenge. Since each of this year’s three candidates announced their bids over the summer, we here at the News have sought to know them from top to bottom. We’ve lounged with them on picnic blankets, observed their interactions and heard about their favorite classes as they “tabled” around campus. We followed them as they created campaign social media content, conversed with potential voters and presented their platforms at candidate fora.

Read our Ward 1 coverage in this week’s special section.

GUEST COLUMNIST

ELIAS THEODORE

Ward

1, my home and yours

Energy, approachability and a new sense of togetherness — that’s what I’m striving to bring to Ward 1. I’m running because I see untapped potential for the alder to connect students with opportunities, to be a figure on campus who radiates positivity around engaging with New Haven.

My priorities will be local and actionable: strengthening the relationship between Yale and New Haven, investing in the New Haven Green, promoting more affordable housing and supporting businesses downtown. I’m so excited to do this work, and I hope you’ll join me.

Just a few years ago, I was a senior at Wilbur Cross High School contemplating my college decision. Yale was everything I wanted in a school, but its location gave me pause. I’ve lived about a mile from campus since I was six. Part of me wondered if I should leave New Haven and explore somewhere new.

At an event for prospective students from the city, former Ward 1 and current Ward 7 Alder Eli Sabin said something that stuck with me: that being an undergraduate at Yale is an entirely new experience of New Haven. Eli’s words reassured me as I accepted my spot and have absolutely proven true.

I loved that my first-year dorm looked out onto the green: the murmurs of music, chanting and passing cars were a thrilling reminder that I lived downtown. But I was also struck by the city’s extreme wealth inequality, which I now witnessed every day. I grew increasingly frustrated that Yale, with all of its resources and espoused commitment to humanity, watches on as one in four New Haveners live below the poverty line. Having a Yale ID completely changes how you experience downtown. I explored Yale’s dining halls and creative spaces. Like many students, I spent a lot of time in the libraries, and gained a love for archival research. As a sophomore, I found myself doing much of my academic work on New Haven and other small postindustrial cities. In the spring, I had the choice between exploring these issues in the classroom or putting what I’ve learned into action. I am running for alder because I want to directly affect change.

Campaigning has been another new experience of New Haven, one full of joy and shaped by conversation. Parents of friends, people I knew from carpooling and playdates, have become mentors. Their work as New Haven Public School teachers, housing policy experts and mental health service providers have shaped my understanding of how a Ward 1 Alder can contribute to a thriving New Haven.

Again and again, I’ve been reminded how much knowledge exists in New Haven outside of Yale. I want to help more students experience this too. These kinds of exchanges don’t just enhance a college education, but are

fundamental to a better relationship between Yale and New Haven.

I’ve registered more than 200 Yale students to vote, from seniors ready to cast their first ballot in New Haven to first years ready to vote in their first election. I’ve been inspired by these conversations with my peers: they care about New Haven and want to be involved. It’s my job to make that easier.

In my hours on the green, I’ve listened to unhoused residents describe the challenges of finding a bed. Shelters are often full and unsafe, and it can take years to secure permanent housing in one of the most competitive rental markets in the country. By advocating for pro-development changes to our zoning laws and new approaches to developer incentivization, I will work to expand affordable housing and address homelessness at its root causes.

AGAIN AND AGAIN, I’VE BEEN REMINDED HOW MUCH KNOWLEDGE EXISTS IN NEW HAVEN OUTSIDE OF YALE. I WANT TO HELP MORE STUDENTS EXPERIENCE THIS TOO.

I’ve walked the ward with a disability rights activist, taking note of the ways in which our sidewalks are dangerous and uninclusive. I’ve talked with members of the green’s faith communities, absorbing their perspective on how proposed developments could disrupt the site’s history. As we invest in downtown, whether that’s adding new attractions to the green or creating more two-way roads, I am committed to ensuring that community input guides these changes.

I’ve heard such a range of priorities and visions for the city, but one message has been consistent: New Haveners want an alder who listens. They want an alder who works and votes solely on behalf of their constituents. And they want an alder who is present and responsive.

Over the last two months, my team and I have built a campaign that prioritizes accessibility and connection. We’ve developed an active social media presence, tabled for dozens of hours across the ward and helped hundreds of new people register to vote. Take my campaign as a preview of how I will serve: with open ears, commitment and joy. For you, for us and for New Haven.

ELIAS THEODORE is a junior in Jonathan Edwards College studying urban studies. He can be reached at elias.theodore@yale.edu.

GUEST COLUMNISTS

NORAH LAUGHTER

AND

SCOTT MARKS

Voter Laughter for racial and economic justice

As the director of New Haven Rising and a student organizer with Students Unite Now, or SUN, the two of us have seen what’s possible when people organize together in New Haven, including our coalition’s success increasing Yale’s annualfair share payments to the city through 2026. By standing shoulder to shoulder, workers, students and residents have secured local hiring commitments, stronger unions and increased city funding.

Since 2012, New Haven Rising has been developing leadership through popular education campaigns that bolster organizing across neighborhoods. Banding neighbors together to fight for racial and economic justice — New Haven Rising’s core mission — is also the foundation of Norah’s campaign for Ward 1 alder.

We’re glad to see more students engaging with this work. At the same time, we know racial justice in New Haven isn’t about saying the right things; it’s a sustained, collective practice. The struggles of workingclass Black and Brown residents are inseparable from fights for union jobs, stable housing, quality healthcare and respect.

Scott’s father worked in construction and later as a custodian at what’s now Yale New Haven Hospital. That work was better than the sharecropping he left behind in North Carolina, but he still worked 80-hour weeks just to get by. In the 1990s, mostly Black men like him lined up by Yale’s dumpsters, hoping for a day’s work in a dining hall. That was what opportunity looked like for many New Haven residents: segregated, exploitative and deeply unjust.

Norah grew up white and workingclass in Kentucky, the daughter of a union public school teacher. In that mostly white community, many Latine neighbors worked as underpaid, unprotected migrant farm laborers. Seeing how race and

class shaped whose labor was valued — and whose was exploited — left a deep impression. Witnessing community members from her Catholic church underpaid for their work was infuriating. That anger, rooted in solidarity, fuels our shared commitment to racial and economic justice in New Haven. In any city, learning to turn values into action starts by showing up first to listen, then to organize.

In 2022, Norah attended her first Rally for Respect, led by Local 33, Yale’s graduate worker union that has improved the standard for work across academia. For her, it was the first time seeing thousands of workers unite and win. For Scott, it was the culmination of a decadeslong fight against Yale’s history of union busting. In 2023, Norah joined over 1,500 students and thousands of union workers who pushed Yale to reinvest in the Yale Health Center, improving care for students, workers, and dependents. The next year, New Haven Rising and SUN mobilized Ward 1 students in support of striking Omni Hotel workers with Local 217, who went on to win significant raises and health benefits for dozens of New Haven families. That’s why we fight alongside organized labor to win for both workers and neighbors. We look to campaigns like Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral bid in New York, which connect racial justice to class struggle by confronting landlords, bosses and wealthy institutions alongside unions and working people. We are kin in that struggle. Just as UNITE HERE’s New York locals support Mamdani, New Haven Rising supports progressive candidates committed to building a movement of working people. This campaign is just one part of that broader project. If we’re serious about justice, we need to connect electoral power with the places where people power is built: picket lines, church basements, tenant meetings

and union halls.

Norah’s campaign for Alder grows directly from that organizing. This includes efforts at the state level as Ward 1 co-chair of the Democratic Town Committee by testifying before the Labor and Public Employees Committee and leading teams of union members to lobby in Hartford for stronger labor protections.

Today, Norah’s shared slate with New Haven Rising member Alder Frank Douglass is rooted in hundreds of conversations with neighbors about rent hikes, evictions, school underfunding and job insecurity. Our shared platform calls for affordable housing, good union jobs, youth opportunity and education, and a fully funded city. To realize this vision, we need to support tenant unions, protect families from displacement and expand local hiring into good union jobs. We’ll also need major investments in afterschool programs, vocational training and youth mentorship. And to pay for it all, we must build a coalition large enough to move real resources into the city. New Haven is special. We’ve built a workingclass coalition that produces results. We can hold Yale and other wealthy employers accountable to the city they depend on. Our coalition has done it before; the struggle and our wins come from decades of committed partnerships grounded in shared vision. In this Democratic Primary, vote for Norah Laughter. Then join a New Haven Rising canvas, and rally with Yale workers on September 25. Standing side by side, we all win.

NORAH LAUGHTER is a senior in Pierson College studying American Studies. She can be reached at norah.laughter@yale.edu.

REVEREND SCOTT MARKS is Director of New Haven Rising. He can be reached at marksscott16@gmail.com.

When I first visited Yale for Admitted Students’ Weekend in 2022, the contrast was striking. I arrived from Wilbur Cross High School, New Haven’s largest public school, where basic necessities like soap in bathrooms and adequate counseling staff were constant struggles. Our annual measure of success was simple: How many students graduated, not whether they found fulfilling paths to college or careers. Against this backdrop, Yale’s resources seemed almost unimaginable.

I saw the resources at Yale, a mere two miles from my high school, and I saw an opportunity to extend these resources to the communities and students I loved. This is a big part of why I’m running for Ward 1 alder. I want to build our ward into one that is engaged, informed and active. Local politics is truly the backbone of our democracy, and the place to begin broader movements. I’m inviting you to become a part of that. This is knowledge and understanding that I hope you will take with you even if you leave New Haven –– that the place in which you live is important and the space you occupy within it is important, and you have a choice in how you relate to and engage with your community. I would like to share a few stories that highlight the person I am and the way I operate in the world. You can read about my platform here, but I wanted to take this time to show you what it would mean for me to be your Alder.

I’ll start here: I was born in New Haven, and grew up in Wooster Square, just a ten minute walk from campus. Wooster Square Park is where I spent many

childhood hours learning to ride my bike, playing with my siblings and attending the Cherry Blossom Festival each year.

The Christopher Columbus statue was a constant presence in the park. As I grew older, I began to consider what this statue’s presence meant, and what it communicated to the thousands who visited our neighborhood park every year.

In June of my sophomore year of high school, I wrote a petition calling for the removal of this statue. I spent hours researching and writing, finding the best way to communicate how the statue detracted from the purpose of this beautiful public gathering space.

The petition was met with widespread support, despite the divisiveness of the issue it addressed.

Thousands of people signed it, from Italian American leaders to community activists, together advocating for the importance of welcoming public spaces. The statue was removed later that summer.

Collective community action is the reason the statue was removed; I was only the catalyst. I understand the power that we hold collectively.

After coming to Yale, I have found a variety of ways to stay connected to the larger community of New Haven. I continue to sing in the choir — located in Ward 1 — that I’ve sung in since I was 9 years old, and I started working with and earned the endorsement of Kiana Flores, the current Ward 1 alder.

Last spring, I had the opportunity to do something I’d been dreaming about for a while: to host a street market in New Haven which brought together New Haven small businesses and Yale student artists.

To execute this event, I navigated various city departments and complex permitting processes in order to close down High Street, get authorization to sell wares and source tables and tents to host participants. Every day for weeks, from the moment I woke up to the minute my head hit the pillow, I planned, coordinated and executed each detail of this event. It took both immense dedication and persistence, but every second was worth seeing Yale students discover the vibrant art scene around them. This passion and unending love for my city is exactly what I would bring to the Board of Alders.

While taking a break from writing this, I read a speech delivered in 1988 by A. Bartlett Giamatti, the 19th president of Yale University, assigned for one of my classes. He spoke about the strength of cities and the necessary duty that exists when we choose to live in one: “The defining character of cities over time is that they are political … and it is the constant activity of a city, as thousands of individual, private, personal decisions and choices all give way finally before one central choice: I choose not to live alon[e] but among others.” It is the greatest joy to live in this incredible city, and you have before you the opportunity to fully realize your place within it. Your engagement at the local level matters so very much. Democracy is an active practice — engage in it with me as your alder.

RHEA MCTIERNAN HUGE is a junior in Davenport College studying philosophy. She can be reached at rhea.mctiernanhuge@yale.edu.

" The ending is nearer than you think, and it is already written. All that we have left to choose is the correct moment to begin.."

Women’s basketball team floundered under new coach

FROM PAGE 1

A new sheriff in town

Eshe was named the 11th Joel E. Smilow Class of 1954 Head Coach of Yale Women's Basketball on April 25, 2022. As a first-time head coach, she introduced a new style of play that she hoped would lead the team to its first Ivy championship in more than 40 years.

“We’re gonna enjoy the grind and the process that it takes to prepare to win championships,” Eshe said at a ceremonial press conference two days after the announcement.

Eshe, who played college basketball at the University of Florida, had a brief professional career in the WNBA before playing in overseas basketball leagues. In 2014, she began her college coaching career as assistant coach at East Carolina University. She then held assistant coach roles at LaSalle University and Princeton University before being named the Yale head coach at age 37.

Every coaching change brings some challenges, and Yale’s gamble on a first-time head coach was bound to present some uncertainty, former player Grace Thybulle ’25 said.

Thybulle explained that coaches often play vastly different “systems,” characterized by the players’ positioning on the court and the types of plays they run. Five people on or close to the team in the last three years described how Eshe’s decision to introduce a new style of basketball, a departure from previous head coach Allison Guth, has proven difficult to execute.

“The two systems are completely different,” said Alexandra Maund ’19, an alumna of the team who now commentates on its games for ESPN+ broadcasts. For one thing, under Eshe, the “post players,” those who play primarily near or below the basket, would move farther beyond that area, often setting a screen before moving there, Maund explained.

“When I first came to a practice last year, I was very confused by what I was seeing, and so I couldn't imagine what the players were feeling,” Maund, who remains close to the team, said.

But Eshe’s new style went beyond decisions on the court. She aimed to instill a new ethos.

“The first thing is about establishing the culture,” Eshe told the local radio host Barbara “Babz” Rawls-Ivy, speaking last fall about her transition to Yale. “These first two years, that’s pretty much what it’s been about.”

But her efforts to remake the team’s culture have not been well received, according to four former players, including one who spoke on the condition of anonymity to maintain a relationship with Eshe.

Three former players said Eshe would bash previous teams for their lack of commitment to the game and criticize players formerly on the team for their attitude towards the sport.

While Guth, the prior coach, built practice schedules each semester around players’ class schedules, Eshe wanted her team to follow her own schedule pref-

erences, said Nyla McGill ’25, who played one season under Guth and two under Eshe before the dispute with her new head coach.

Thybulle said there was a “disconnect” between the way players sought to balance academics and athletics and the way Eshe expected them to do so.

“A lot of people who came to Yale, basketball wasn't necessarily the most important thing in their lives,” she said. “They were more so coming to Yale because they valued other things. I think that was looked at as ‘OK, here's this group of girls who have been recruited here who aren't necessarily hungry to win.’”

When asked in April about the allegations about her coaching style, Eshe wrote in a statement to the News that “success stems not only from what we accomplish on the court, but from the environment we create around our student-athletes every day.”

She added: “I remain deeply committed to fostering a program where our athletes can thrive — both academically and athletically.”

Losing players In recent years, the team has also struggled with an unusual amount of player turnover.

Since 2023, seven players have split from the team and graduated or are on track to graduate without using their entire four years of NCAA eligibility, according to rosters published on the Yale Athletics website.

That attrition marks an increase from previous seasons.

Between 2010 and 2019, the team averaged one non-injured player departing the roster during or after each season. Since 2023, that average has more than doubled, to 2.33 players per season.

McGill said she was removed from the team in March 2024 after an argument with Eshe. McGill was initially suspended from the team after missing a practice due to a midterm exam, she said. A conversation with Eshe about her future on the team culminated in Eshe kicking McGill out of her office using an expletive, which another player confirmed hearing from the nearby locker room.

“Coach D wanted the players to be at her beck and call,” McGill said, referring to Eshe. “All she cared about was whether you could deliver on the basketball court.”

When asked in March about McGill’s departure from the team, Eshe did not offer an explanation but wrote to the News that “the personnel on every team changes year to year.” Eshe did not comment on the exchange with McGill when asked in an email this week.

Christen McCann ’25, who quit the team in December 2024, said Eshe and her coaching staff seemed not to understand the “true nature of the 18- to 22-year-old kids,” at least compared to Guth, the head coach her first year.

“Being able to recognize and implement the proper way of going about shaping these kids and showing them the way is something that needs to be valued by every coach,” McCann

said. “My freshman year, the biggest difference was that there was space to just be.”

Avery Lee ’25 left the team for the 2023-24 season and returned in her senior year as the captain. Lee declined to comment for this article.

Just after the 2024-25 season concluded, two players, Lola Lesmond ’26 and Abigail Long ’28 entered the NCAA transfer portal, as first reported by the sports website On3. Neither player ended up transferring to a different school, and both are absent from the 2025-26 roster available online. Lesmond and Long each declined to comment.

“I think it is concerning to lose so many people, especially on such a small team,” Thybulle said. “Every loss, every quit is really felt.”

A rookie roster

The team entered the 2024-25 season short on top talent even before McCann, Lesmond and Long left.

Jenna Clark ’24, the team’s leading scorer for the prior two seasons and one of the best assisting players in the country, graduated in 2024.

Jenn Hatfield, who covers the Ivy League for The IX Basketball, a website about women’s basketball, described Clark in a phone interview as “difficult” to replace.

Meanwhile, McGill’s departure left the team without its top defensive player. She was the Ivy League Co-Defensive Player of the Year in the 2022-23 season. With the team’s highest-scoring player graduated and best defensive player off the roster, Eshe had to find contributions elsewhere last season. But players with collegiate experience were few and far between, due to the departures and recruiting gaps such as the signing of only a single player — a sophomore last year — for the class of 2027.

Last season, the team had one standout: Mackenzie Egger ’25. Egger, who contributed an average of just 3.9 points per game throughout her first three seasons with the Elis, led the team in scoring last season with 15.3 points

per game, more than double that of the next-best scorer, Thybulle. Egger led the Ivy League with 245 rebounds — 75 more than her closest competitor.

“Mac has always set the gold standard for hard work, and her commitment to refining her shot and building confidence in the offseason has truly paid off,” Eshe wrote in her March statement to the News.

Eshe also relied heavily last season on her five first-year recruits, as well as a sophomore transfer. By Feb. 7 last season, Yale was the only Ivy League team with five first-year players who had each seen action in 15 or more games, according to a Yale Athletics news post.

In the March statement, Eshe called the class of 2028 “outstanding.”

“We’re excited to see their continued development and the impact they will make next year,” she wrote.

However, a heavy first-year rotation still presented challenges. Hatfield said the prominence of first years resulted in a team “more reliant on players with less experience.”

When asked about what led to the team’s troubling record, Thybulle also named the prominence of first years playing as a reason.

“There was just a high margin for error,” Thybulle said. “And I think everyone's in the process of learning.”

What comes next?

Looking toward next season, it remains unclear how Yale women’s basketball will chart a path forward, still with an underclassmen-heavy roster.

Since Lesmond quit the team, Kiley Capstraw ’26, this year’s captain, will be the only senior on the team this season. The team’s only non-transfer junior tore her ACL last season, which will likely cause her to miss the 2025-26 season, a former teammate told the News.

On July 2, the program announced its six-player incoming first-year class, which is larger than the previous year’s class of

five recruits. Two junior transfers are also joining this year’s roster. Two of the first years and the two junior transfers are over six feet, bringing some much-needed size to Yale’s frontcourt.

Over the summer, one of the team’s assistant coaches, Amber Raisner, left Yale to join West Point’s women’s basketball program as an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator. Raisner, who in March was honored as one of 30 “up-and-coming women’s basketball coaches” by the Women's Basketball Coaches Association, had been the last remaining member of the original four-member coaching staff Eshe hired in 2022.

The program announced on July 30 that Anna Kim, a player in a Korean basketball league from 2020 to last year, would fill Raisner’s shoes. Kim had served as the coordinator for player development at the University of Washington’s women’s basketball team for two seasons, her only job with a collegiate team according to her biography on the Yale Athletics website.

Less than a week later, the team left for an overseas tour in France and Spain from Aug. 5 to 15. International tours — which the NCAA permits teams to take only once every four years — are often scheduled in the hopes of building team culture and as a recruiting incentive, Matt Brown, who writes a newsletter about college sports, told The IX Basketball in a June article.

The team played two games on the tour, against the Barcelona-based athletic club El Pacto on Aug. 8, and the French club Antibes Select on Aug. 11. In those games, the Bulldogs fell 73-66 and 76-65, respectively. Yale women’s basketball is scheduled to play its first game of the 2025-26 season on Nov. 7 against Northeastern at home. Meredith Henderson contributed reporting.

Contact JONAS LOESEL at jonas.loesel@yale.edu

Yale, YPD union negotiations warm after two tense years

“We have not reached an agreement yet but hope to have one soon,” Sarno wrote.

Reached by phone Thursday afternoon, Head of Public Safety Duane Lovello said he was as “anxious to move this forward as anyone else.” Under the current contract

extension — which was instituted after the last contract expired in June 2023 — the union was prohibited from striking while the agreement remained in effect.

Instead, over the past two years, the YPBA has capitalized on highly visible events to stir community support for its demands. During Bulldog Days in the spring, more than 30 union members gathered outside the Schwarzman Center to hand out leaflets encouraging students and parents to support a fair contract for “the people protecting you.”

However, as first years arrived on campus for move-in on Aug. 17 — and upperclassmen returned only a few days later — the YPBA was noticeably silent, after two consecutive years of applying public pressure on Yale during move-in days.

Hall explained the organization's silence as the outcome of “significant progress” made over the summer in negotiations between the union and the University.

“We didn’t think it was necessary to do anything on freshmen arrival,” Hall said.

In November 2024, University negotiators had presented their “Last, Best and Final Offer” to the union. The union promptly rejected

the offer, which did not meet its demands for long-term disability benefits for officers injured in the line of duty, wage adjustments and enhanced due process protections. Hall previously told the News that the union provided a counterproposal a month later and Yale refused to respond.

It is unclear whether the University has agreed to meet any of the counterproposal’s demands over the summer negotiations.

Last spring, Officer Richard Simons, the caretaker of the Yale Public Safety service dog Heidi, had expressed his hope to retire with Heidi once the new contract came into effect.

Simons told the News this week that he is confident he will be able to retire by the end of the month.

Simons’ and Heidi’s retirement party is currently scheduled for Sept. 22. The last YPD contract was ratified in 2018 and expired in June 2023.

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

BASKETBALL

The Yale Police union entered into contract negotiations with the University in June 2023. After two years of rallying and a move to strike, the union’s president said a new contract is finally near. / Ellie Park

Delila Eshe speaks at a news conference in April 2022, two days after being named the women's basketball head coach / William McCormack

FROM THE FRONT

New policy classifies doxxing as harrassment

DOXXING FROM PAGE 1

“This policy is not intended to limit the exercise of free expression,” the webpage says.

Goff-Crews wrote in a statement to the News that “before the policy was developed, we provided guidance to the community on doxing.”

free expression on campus.

The new policy followed advocacy by the Yale College Council and the Graduate and Professional Student Senate. In April, the YCC passed a bill urging the University to expand anti-doxxing protections and establish clear disciplinary procedures.

The YCC bill called on administrators to designate an office — such as the Office of Institutional Equity and

The previous guidance recommended that students report instances of doxxing to the Yale Police Department. The new policy webpage suggests calling the Yale police if “you believe you are at risk of immediate harm.”

Accessibility — as the main authority handling student doxxing cases, to provide “full legal counsel and resources for students who are victims of doxxing,” and to commit to a “policy of non-disclosure of student records, including disciplinary records, to third parties.”

On June 11, the YCC and GPSS also sent a joint letter to University President Maurie McInnis asking Yale to adopt a university-wide anti-doxxing policy.

GPSS President Saman Haddad LAW ’26 told the News that Yale administrators worked with student leaders over the summer to draft the policy.

“Doxxing is obviously extremely, extremely hard to define,” Haddad said. “Is the policy perfect? No. It’s going to be a work in progress. What is important is that there’s a concerted effort to say that this type of behavior — the release of identifying information to harm someone — is unacceptable on our campus.”

Haddad added that Goff-Crews’ office coordinated the drafting process and sought feedback from the student governments before releasing the final version.

“To their credit, they moved quickly,” he said.

YCC President Andrew Boanoh ’27 wrote in a statement to the News that the policy aims to enhance, rather than limit,

“Yale needed to take some action in addressing what is a largely new and hard-to-pin-down form of harassment on campus,” Boanoh wrote, pointing to the targeting of student protesters last academic year. “This new policy solidifies Yale's promise to protect students' rights and abilities to peacefully dissent in a way that I believe students on any side of any aisle will support.”

In November 2023, amid pro-Palestinian protests on campus, a so-called doxxing truck with a digital billboard drove around Yale’s campus, displaying the photos and names of Yale students under a banner reading “Yale’s Leading Antisemites.”

Zoe Murray SPH ’26, a GPSS advocacy co-chair, underscored that without protections, students might have been afraid to participate in campus life.

“This policy is a step forward to fostering a campus environment that prioritizes political and advocacy participation, and engagement in academic scholarship without fear,” Murray said, “an affirmation especially needed and important at this time.”

Yale’s adoption of the policy brings it in line with other universities that have codified rules against online harassment.

In March, Columbia University enacted an anti-doxxing and online harassment policy. Harvard also prohibits doxxing explicitly. The issue has drawn national attention amid the Trump administration’s pressure on universities to restrict student protesters, such as by curbing masked demonstrations. Columbia in March adopted a ban on masking at protests in order to restore its federal funding.

By contrast, student leaders at Yale have asked the University to affirm students’ rights to wear masks at protests, framing it as a protection against doxxing. Yale’s new policy does not include such a commitment, nor does it extend to offering guaranteed legal counsel to victims, as the YCC initially requested. The policy says the Office of Institutional Equity and Accessibility should handle reports of doxxing “based on protected characteristics,” which include race and sex.

More than 100 Yale professors and staff members signed an open letter in November 2023 defending the students targeted by the “doxxing truck.”

Contact BAALA SHAKYA at baala.shakya@yale.edu

Candidates trade jabs, share goals at alder debate

DEBATE FROM PAGE 1

Laughter said that the upcoming expiration of the university’s voluntary contribution to New Haven was the city’s most pressing issue. She called Yale’s “austerity measures” — potential budget cuts that may be made in response to a major increase in the tax on the University’s endowment returns — a “major threat.”

Asked if she supported the budget Mayor Justin Elicker proposed this spring and that was passed over the summer, Laughter said that her “focus on the city budget is more around getting Yale to pay more to the city of New Haven.”

Discussing crime-related issues, McTiernan Huge, who echoed Theodore’s support for violence prevention through social work, said that “the best way to get more investment in such programs is to have Yale contribute more to New Haven.”

In the short term, McTiernan Huge said, she would “demand Yale give more to New Haven.”

Laughter seconded this sentiment soon after, calling for the University to pay its “fair share.”

Each candidate said they believed Yale should increase its yearly payment, currently $23.2 million, to New Haven. Theodore and Laughter both discussed Yale’s $41.4 billion endowment, with Theodore adding that increasing the voluntary contribution would be a net positive for the school.

“Every dollar Yale puts into the payment, they will get back,” he said. “More people will want to study here. More people will want to work here.”

Theodore and Laughter both pointed to this increased payment as one way to plug New Haven public schools’ budget deficit.

Asked how she would address New Haven’s growing rates of

homelessness, Laughter again demanded that Yale pay more.

Little disagreement on policy issues

Theodore, Laughter and McTiernan Huge took similar positions on key policy issues facing New Haven. All three repeatedly returned to the University’s potential as an instrument to address the city’s needs.

Discussing how they would address violent crime rates in the city, all three candidates gestured away from traditional policing.

Asked about the city’s affordable housing shortage and rising cost of living, Laughter and Theodore both said they would work to make homeless shelters more accessible, and expressed support for inclusionary zoning measures to support affordability. McTiernan Huge and Theodore said they supported more subsidized affordable housing.

When asked what sets their campaigns apart from one another, the candidates described their backgrounds: McTiernan Huge and Theodore both alluded to their experiences growing up in the city, while Laughter discussed her organizing work.

The candidates clearly diverged on one policy matter, when asked how they would have voted in the Board of Alders’ tabled 2024 proposal to call for a ceasefire in Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza.

Laughter said she would have voted for the resolution, labeling Israel’s actions in Gaza a “genocide.” She also alluded to her involvement with the 2024 Yale encampments protesting the University’s investment in military weapons manufacturers.

Theodore and McTiernan Huge both equivocated, saying they would have voted based on their constituents’ opinions on the resolution. Theodore said that he would sup-

port students’ and New Haveners’ freedom of speech, and that he was “ready to be an alder who's outspoken on these kinds of issues.”

At times, Laughter and Theodore sparred directly. Theodore called into question the current makeup of the Ward 1 Democratic committee, which voted unanimously in July to endorse Laughter in an informal capacity.

“I don’t think it was the most reflective of Ward 1,” Theodore said. “It was a lot of seniors who Norah is friends with who were already involved in Yale’s organizing communities. It wasn’t something that brought new people into this process.”

Laughter, however, touted the assembly of the committee as a key part of her political experience, describing its members as “fighters” and people who had already “proven their engagement with the city,” though acknowledging that they were also her friends.

Later in the debate, Laughter gently challenged Theodore’s campaign tactics on two occasions, including his emphasis on on-campus tabling and social media outreach.

“I think that tabling is one step, but I think that committing to an organizing structure and holding one another accountable is another step that's involved in increasing student engagement,” Laughter said.

Candidates cater to different constituencies

Throughout the debate, Laughter repeatedly emphasized her work with local workers’ unions and organizers in Students Unite Now and New Haven Rising, referring to these groups as her “coalition.”

“I think the ‘Yale bubble’ is kind of mythological in a lot of ways, because we have workers coming on campus every single day who are residents of this city and don’t attend Yale,” Laughter said.

She positioned herself as an experienced organizer within New Haven and state politics, describing her work with the Democratic Town Committee, on picket lines and lobbying at the state capitol. Theodore conceded that he doesn’t have “traditional political experience,” but said that “the energy I bring is new.” He added that his background helps him relate to new Yale students who don’t yet understand or care about New Haven politics.

McTiernan Huge did not clearly define the specific base she aimed to reach. She positioned herself as responsive and accountable to Ward 1 residents and emphasized her skill as a listener.

Current Ward 1 alder was absent, faced candidates’ criticism Though she did not attend the debate, citing “a schedule conflict,” current Ward 1 Alder Kiana Flores ’25.5 came under light fire from each of the candidates. Flores said she watched part of the debate via the News’ Instagram livestream. Theodore said that Flores “stands for very good things,” but added that “in terms of connecting with students, there’s a lot more to ask for.”

Theodore said that, hoping to learn from Flores, he had reached out to her five times during her aldership but never heard back.

Speaking with the News Wednesday night, Flores said that “we’ve seen each other in person a few times, I just have not had the time to sit down and speak with him.” She also suggested that Theodore may have been trying to contact her with a phone number she no longer uses.

McTiernan Huge, who scored an endorsement from Flores in May, was gentler with her criticism. While discussing her own plans to reach out to non-Yalies

living in apartment buildings downtown, McTiernan Huge said that “those are people” whom Flores “admits to not having engaged with as much as she wanted to.”

“I don’t see the criticism as anything personal,” Flores told the News. “I don’t have any regrets of not doing constituent outreach,” she said, adding that her goal “was to just do a little bit better than” her predecessor. In lightning round, Laughter and McTiernan Huge have fun, Theodore stays focused

The debate ended with an opportunity for the candidates to showcase their personalities: each was asked to pose a question to their competitors.

McTiernan Huge asked Laughter and Theodore what they would choose to eat for their “death row meal,” while Laughter posed a recently viral question: “If you had to give up kissing or sauces, which would you choose?” Theodore asked each of his competitors to name a person from New Haven, dead or alive, they’d like to meet. Laughter named Gwen Mills, the international president of the hospitality workers’ union UNITE HERE, who got her start in New Haven. McTiernan Huge said she would reunite with former classmates from Wilbur Cross High School. New Haven’s Democratic primary election is on Sept. 9. At the debate, all three candidates said they would support the primary winner in the general election.

Contact ELIJAH HUREWITZ-RAVITCH at elijah.hurewitz-ravitch@yale.edu and SABRINA THALER at sabrina.thaler@yale.edu

McInnis’ committee on trust unsure of priorities

ing and research at the heart.”

ness,” a trait that she believes will be realized with upcoming student input this fall.

A faculty-only committee

In June, the Buckley Institute’s board of directors sent McInnis a letter urging her to add its director, Lauren Noble ’11, to the committee because of her experience leading Buckley — an organization that bills itself as a protector of free speech and intellectual diversity.

The committee’s membership is composed exclusively of faculty across Yale College and the professional schools, which sparked criticism from the Buckley Institute. In its letter to McInnis, the institute’s board of directors argued that the committee lacks “an outsider’s vantage point.”

“Simply put, much of the distrust of higher education today stems from the fact that the campus is an echo chamber,” Noble wrote to the News. “While well-intentioned, the committee lacks members outside of the faculty bubble.”

Gage said Noble will not be appointed to the committee, but she did say she met with Noble over the summer and plans to continue such conversations.

In the letter, Buckley’s board of directors praised McInnis for her reluctance to comment publicly on political issues and “new protest policies” — steps they deemed “crucial” to restoring trust. Still, the letter warned that Yale “has a long way to go” and risks reinforcing the perception that elite universities are “ideological echo chambers.”

“The truth is, faculty members cannot solve this problem alone. Indeed, Ivy League faculty life is dramatically different from that of the average American,” the letter stated. “While the faculty perspective is critical for any discussion involving campus life,

as head of the Buckley Institute for over a decade, Ms. Noble can bring the perspective of someone with a long-term commitment to Yale’s betterment.”

Gage and Adams defended the committee’s membership, explaining that the faculty-only composition reflects the group’s mission.

“It really has to do with the faculty’s specific role, which is so close to the core of the university, and the emphasis on teaching and research in particular,” Adams said. “That positions faculty to be able to encourage adventurous thinking about trust in higher education, while keeping teach -

Gage added that the committee was deliberately kept small to allow close collaboration, while still representing “different viewpoints and different constituencies” across Yale.

Members of the Committee on Trust in Higher Education are affiliated with the School of Medicine, School of Management, School of Public Health, School of the Environment, the Law School and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Contact BAALA SHAKYA at baala.shakya@yale.edu

Yale adopted a new policy, published online July 28, to treat doxxing as a form of harassment. / Chloe Edwards

HIGHER ED FROM PAGE 1

“But lurking behind every summer was a fall just waiting to happen.”

AARON DRIES, AUTHOR

Budget Lab gains traction for forecasting impacts of Trump policies

BY JAEHA JANG STAFF REPORTER

Nine months into the Trump administration, the Budget Lab at Yale has become a media favorite.

Analyses from the nonpartisan policy research center –– founded last year by three former members of the Biden administration –– have been featured to predict the impacts of President Donald Trump’s tax and tariff policies in publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post and the the Wall Street Journal. And an appearance by the lab’s president on the Times’ “Ezra Klein Show” podcast has garnered more than 330,000 views on YouTube alone.

The lab’s leaders want coverage of their work to shape discourse about the impacts of federal policies –– among both the public and

lawmakers –– according to Martha Gimbel, the lab’s executive director.

“For example, on tariffs, our work helped define the narrative about how this policy would impact American families, amplified through coverage in hundreds of media outlets,” Gimbel wrote to the News. “Coverage in trusted outlets keeps our analysis relevant in the policy debate long after the report is published, extending its impact and advancing our mission.”

Jacob Hacker GRD ’00, a political science professor at Yale, wrote to the News that the kab has proved to be a “remarkably valuable and timely addition” to debates over fiscal policy and particularly tariffs.

The lab’s members “have a keen eye for how the results of such analyses can be presented in the

most accessible and impactful way,” Hacker wrote.

According to the lab’s leaders, the key to its prominence lies in its quick turnaround and longterm insights.

Last fall, months before Trump’s inauguration, the lab developed a model to evaluate the impacts of tariff policies. That model was designed to calculate the effects of policies “quickly, often before they become the focus of broader public debate,” according to Gimbel.

“This has let us respond extraordinarily quickly to new developments,” she wrote. “When changes in tariff policy are announced, we’re able to release updated analysis quickly, often within hours.”

Similar preparations with tax simulator and macroeconomic models left the lab ready to pro -

vide rapid analyses of the Republican budget reconciliation bill, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, over the summer, Gimbel added.

Natasha Sarin ’11, the Lab’s president and a Yale Law School professor, wrote to the News that the lab’s prominence also comes from its assessments of policies’ long-term impacts on American families. According to Gimbel, the lab’s analyses allow policymakers to project a policy’s effect 30 years down the future –– instead of the usual 10-year budget window. This wider timeframe reveals sustained impacts of policies like investment in education that are not always clear in the short term, she wrote.

She added that the lab’s founders came to realize the importance of budget scorekeeping in every policy area

when they worked in government. According to her, while the Congressional Budget Office is limited by specific instructions from Congress, the Budget Lab can show the fuller costs and benefits of different policy options over time.

“We’ve worked with members of Congress from both parties who know and appreciate that we are committed to providing rigorous analysis that is focused on current policy debate,” she wrote.

Going forward, Gimbel wrote, the lab plans to take its innovative policy analysis into new areas, including research on how artificial intelligence is affecting labor markets.

The Budget Lab at Yale launched in April 2024.”

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

BY SABRINA THALER STAFF REPORTER

Organizers who oppose the airline’s contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement distributed materials at the New Haven Road Race on Monday and circulated a petition about Yale Athletics.

Among the spectators at the Faxon Law New Haven Road Race on Monday were a group of activists encouraging race participants to “run from Avelo” on their way to the finish line.

Beginning in April, organizers circulated a petition and hosted multiple protests at Tweed New Haven Airport against the airline after it began a partnership with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in April to carry out flights for President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation push. Since then, the campaign has extended to include community outreach efforts at events like Monday’s race, as well as efforts to shame local organizations for ties with the airline.

On Monday, a group of volunteers from the New Haven Immigrants Coalition distributed handdrawn “Boycott Avelo” bibs, waved signs along the route and ran an information booth on the New Haven Green.

“Avelo used to call itself New Haven’s hometown airline,” Anne Watkins, an organizer with the coalition, said at the race. “We have friends and neighbors who have been directly impacted by deportation and detention. We

don’t want a company that is profiting directly off of those activities to be here in New Haven.”

The organizers also distributed red cards to passersby, which offered scripts to read to assert their rights in case a federal agent asks them to prove their citizenship, enter their home or search their belongings.

Avelo is the leading airline at Tweed New Haven Airport, from which it operates flights to 21 locations. In New Haven, activists and city officials have criticized the airline’s ICE contract as an affront to the city’s liberal values.

A coalition of local activist groups — New Haven Immigrants Coalition, Unidad Latina en Acción, CT Shoreline Indivisible and Connecticut Students for a Dream, among others — continued their work throughout the summer on the campaign to boycott Avelo. Last week, the coalition launched a petition urging Yale’s athletics program to cut its presumed ties with the airline, including a 2022 partnership to feature Avelo advertisements at Yale sports games.

A Yale spokesperson wrote in a statement to the News that the University’s sponsorship deal with Avelo has expired. Leslie Blatteau, the president of the New Haven Federation of Teachers, joined the demonstration at Monday’s race. Blatteau said she wants to put a stop to the “fear and chaos” she said the Trump adminitration has instilled in the community.

“We as a teachers’ union believe that we should not put profits over people and that we should not engage in cooperation with a business that is separating families,” she said. “We want our students and families to feel safe to come to school every day.”

In July, the Faxon Law New Haven Road Race’s director announced that it would end its partnership with

Avelo, a leading sponsor in recent years, as a result of the ICE contract.

This year, Breeze Airways — the only other airline operating at Tweed, and the competitor Avelo partially blamed for declining revenue in New Haven — joined the race’s list of partners. Breeze Airways and Avelo did

not immediately reply to the News’ requests for comment.

Avelo Airlines is headquartered in Houston, Texas.

Liza Kaufman contributed reporting

Contact SABRINA THALER at sabrina.thaler@yale.edu

“Summer is leaving silently. Much like a traveler approaching the end of an amazing journey.”

DARNELL LAMONT WALKER WRITER AND DIRECTOR

YCC tables $5,000 proposal to fund Adobe Creative Cloud

BY ASHER BOISKIN STAFF REPORTER

The Yale College Council Senate voted Sunday to table a proposal to allocate $5,000 from the Senate budget to reimburse students for Adobe Creative Cloud licenses, delaying action until next week.

Senators and YCC officials raised concerns about the proposal’s scope, funding and compliance with the student government’s constitution.

YCC Vice President Jalen Bradley ’27 suggested President Donald Trump’s higher education policy as the reason why the Council has yet to adopt a budget, which had been finalized at this point last year. Bradley did not elaborate on that explanation in the meeting.

The proposal, introduced by Saybrook Senator Brendan Kaminski ’28, would fund roughly 142 Adobe Creative Cloud licenses for students with demonstrated need. It comes after Yale Information Technology Services announced in July the end of free Adobe access for students, faculty and staff.

Now, the University is subsidizing the cost of Adobe licenses for students at $35.05.

“Through conversations with students involved in design-oriented majors and organizations, many have concluded that this is a financial barrier to peer creativity,” Kaminski said.

Under the new proposal, students, club leaders and organizations could apply for reimbursements by submitting a NetID, proof of purchase

and a brief explanation of their need for the software. Applications would be reviewed by the council’s financial policy team.

“The free subscription allows students to express their creativity and learn valuable tools used in creative workspaces,” Alexis Lam ’27, whose testimony was included in the proposal, said. “It has become the lifeline for my personal and professional projects.”

Eugene Covington ’28, the YCC’s finance co-director, raised the possibility that the bill might conflict with budgetary rules, noting that using student activity fees to subsidize independent organizations could constitute a misuse.

Article 14 of the YCC constitution directs the YCC to use its budget — which largely comes from the student activity fee — to serve “the student body in all external budgets” rather than organizations. Kaminski’s bill, which allows “campus organization representatives” and “organizations seeking reimbursement” to apply for financial assistance, may violate that provision.

“Organizations with their own tax recognition and membership restrictions could benefit from these stipends, which might indirectly support their operating expenses rather than addressing individual student needs,” Covington said.

Bradley, the vice president, said uncertainty surrounding the YCC’s budget for the school year complicates the council’s ability to

act on the proposal. He pointed to “what’s going on in D.C. with the president and progressive higher education and schools like Yale.”

The Trump administration has taken a hard line with elite universities but has not targeted Yale with funding cuts that most other Ivy League schools have experienced.

The tax and spending bill enacted in July increased the tax on endowment gains to 8 percent for the richest universities, such as Yale.

“The budget would usually be passed by now,” Bradley said. “Yale doesn’t know the budget that they’re giving to the YCC yet.” Bradley said that he and YCC

president Andrew Boanoh ’27 are meeting with Yale administrators this week and that he looks forward to revisiting Kaminski’s proposal. Last year, the YCC budget was $929,609.

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

Yale Law clinic helps ex-officials file brief backing Harvard

BY BAALA SHAKYA AND HENRY LIU STAFF REPORTERS

A Yale Law School clinic is representing a group of former high-ranking government officials legally backing Harvard’s lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s executive order barring international students from studying there.

The bipartisan group of former top cabinet officials argues that Trump’s proclamation violates constitutional principles by targeting individuals without due process, according to the amicus brief filed on their behalf by Yale’s Peter Gruber Rule of Law Clinic on Aug. 28.

preliminary injunction blocking the proclamation, which is being appealed by the Trump administration in the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Harvard has continued to enroll international students as the case moves forward.

Harold Hongju Koh, a professor and former dean of the Law School, is one of the lawyers representing the former officials in their legal backing of Harvard. In a press release, Koh wrote that Harvard’s lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security would be critical “not just for Harvard, but for every American university and their international students who help make it a global beacon,” arguing that the executive branch cannot act arbitrarily to punish disfavored institutions.

The brief was filed on behalf of 21 ex-government officials, including former CIA Director Michael Hayden, former Senator and U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, former U.N. Ambassador John Danforth DIV ’63 LAW ’63 and former Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines.

students is a retaliatory and unlawful attack on higher education that undermines both American constitutional structure and national security.

The brief emphasizes that international students are critical to American technological leadership and security, citing international students’ contributions to the American defense industry and the opportunities they provide for the United States to extend “soft power” over different countries.

The 21 officials further contend that the administration’s ban “directly benefits America’s adversaries and strategic competitors” by driving top students to attend universities in other countries out of “profound fear, concern, and confusion.”

“Yale must step up for Harvard, because we and our clients believe that it is illegal for the Executive Branch to punish a leading university and its students through repeated extrajudicial sanctions, simply because it disapproves of how the university exercises its academic freedom,” Fred Halbhuber LAW ’25 and Brady Worthington LAW ’27, two law students who helped file the brief, wrote in a joint statement to the News.

“It is the Administration’s damaging actions — not Harvard’s — that threaten U.S. national security,” the brief states. “In an age where technological dominance determines national security, keeping the doors of our leading universities open to international students is vital to protecting America’s national security.”

While the 21 individuals are represented by Koh and law student members of the Peter Gruber Rule of Law Clinic, the brief states that it “does not purport to state the views of Yale Law School or Yale University.”

In June, Yale University backed Harvard in a separate lawsuit against the Trump administration’s cuts to federal research funding.

Following Harvard’s lawsuit against Trump’s order to bar international students, federal judge Allison D. Burroughs issued a

Together, the former officials argue that the Trump administration’s June 4 executive order banning Harvard’s international

Per the press release from the Rule of Law clinic, two-thirds of the former officials backing Harvard in the amicus brief were either appointed by or served in Republican administrations.

Contact BAALA SHAKYA at baala.shakya@yale.edu and HENRY LIU at henry.liu.hal52@yale.edu.

‘Why Yale?’ admissions question rephrased

BY FABEHA JAHRA STAFF REPORTER

The undergraduate admissions office rephrased the classic “Why Yale?” supplemental essay prompt on its application this year.

“Reflect on how your interests, values, and/or experiences have drawn you to Yale,” the new question reads — a change from the previous question, “What is it about Yale that has led you to apply?”

The change is intended to push applicants to tell their own stories rather than repeat what they know about Yale, Mark Dunn ’07, a senior admissions administrator, wrote to the News.

The other Yale-specific supplemental questions will be the same

ones asked in the last two admissions cycles, Dunn wrote.

Hannah Mendlowitz ’12, another senior admissions administrator, said that the admissions office rephrased the “Why Yale?” question to clarify what admissions officers are looking for in applicants’ responses to that particular prompt.

“Our goal is to make the questions as clear as possible so that applicants understand what we are asking them and the type of responses that make for a successful Yale supplement,” she wrote to the News.

Carlos Cedano ’29, a first year who applied to Yale last year, told the News the old “Why Yale?” prompt helped him conduct

deeper research on the University and reflect on how he could contribute to its community.

“The Yale supplemental questions encouraged me to talk about myself and learn more about Yale in the process,” Cedano wrote.

Cedano advised future applicants to use the new “Why Yale?” prompt to “show your personality and passions by demonstrating that you would truly benefit from an interdisciplinary education.”

“Just be yourself and answer honestly,” he added.

Applicants must respond to the “Why Yale?” question in 125 words or fewer.

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

BAALA SHAKYA / PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

The Yale College Council Senate delayed a vote to fund Adobe licenses, formerly free for Yale students.

BAALA SHAKYA / PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Yale’s rule of law clinic filed a legal brief on behalf of 21 ex-government officials in

administration.

YULIN ZHEN / PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

The new prompt will encourage applicants to reflect on their interests, values and experiences rather than writing about the University, two admissions officers said.

“What

JOHN STEINBECK, AUTHOR

Yalies show off at annual dance talent show

BY KIVA BANK STAFF REPORTER

Sunday night was lit up with graceful leaps and bursts of color on the stage of the Off Broadway Theater. The room was packed full of students eagerly watching Dance Jam, an annual showcase organized by the Alliance for Dance at Yale, or ADAY.

ADAY is an umbrella organization for all dance groups at Yale College, currently represented by five board members who are active members of different dance groups. Since 2014, ADAY has organized Dance Jam to showcase the range of styles and genres among the various dance groups on campus.

This year, on Aug. 31, 13 of the 20 active dance groups represented by the organization, including Rangeela, Modern Dance Collective, Taps, Ballroom Dance Team, Red Lantern, Ballet Folklorico and Sabrosura, performed at Dance Jam for new students.

“Dance Jam has been a very stable event for all dance groups to showcase their talents to incoming freshmen,” Irene

Zheng ’27, technical coordinator for ADAY, said. The three act showcase ran from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., despite a 20-minute delay due to technical difficulties with lighting cues, according to Zheng.

Throughout the night, the crowd continuously cheered as the lighting display illuminated the movements of the performers from every angle. The audience was packed with aspiring dancers, some even sitting on the floor of the theater due to overflow.

“This crowd is actually one of our best,” said Wangeci Gitonga ’28, president of Dzana, Yale’s afrofusion dance group. She noted that Dzana dancers thrive off of the audience’s energy. Before their performance, they practice cheers with the audience to encourage active participation, which this audience did naturally, Gitonga said. According to Gitonga, Dzana values passion in auditions, since the group does not require dance experience. They like to “give face” or perform with expression, as the name for the group comes from the Shona word meaning to dance energetically.

Gitonga noted that — in addition to performances — workshops also factor into the audition experience.

“Performances really sell the vibe of the group and that energy to people,” Gitonga said. “But I also think workshops could be helpful in showing the day to day dynamic of the dance group.”

Claris Shin ’29, who plans to audition for the hip-hop group Rhythmic Blue, attended one of their pre-audition workshops Monday. Shin said dance was a significant factor in her decision to attend Yale, and since arriving, the dance community has exceeded her expectations.

“I feel like now I really have to audition, like I need to,” Shen said after participating in the workshop, noting that it was a “turning point” in her decision to audition for Rhythmic Blue.

Carly Thinfen ’28, Rhythmic Blue’s outreach coordinator, recalled her experience watching Dance Jam last year before auditions for dance groups began. She said she arrived 30 minutes early, eager to watch the dancers.

This year, she was just as

enthusiastic about performing.

“I’m just really excited to give the first years and anyone else who’s interested in dancing at Yale a show, and hopefully encourage them to audition for whatever group they’re going for,” Thinfen said.

Thinfen, who is also the class coordinator for Yale Dancers, acknowledged that her auditions for both Rhythmic Blue and Yale Dancers were long processes that were worth it in the long run.

“There’s nothing to lose in auditioning and everything to gain,” Thinfen said. “I think it’s just very special being tapped into arts at Yale.”

ADAY coordinates dance groups’ reservations of audition spaces, but does not intervene in the audition and selection process, according to Zheng, ADAY’s technical coordinator

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

A cappella rush begins with promise of good music, community

BY KIVA BANK STAFF REPORTER

On Monday night, as the final note of the Whiffenpoofs’ performance rang out in Marsh Lecture Hall, students prepared to rush out of the auditorium to sign up for a cappella auditions.

Waiting outside the doors were representatives from each of Yale’s 17 singing groups, who were inviting the newest group of singers to sign up for auditions.

Monday marked the official start of a cappella rush, an annual two week recruitment process that consists of auditions, meals and concerts. Rush ends with Tap Night, when some

rushees receive invitations to join an a cappella group. Before rush kicked off, a cappella hopefuls attended Woolsey Jam and Marsh Jam, annual concerts that show off Yale’s variety of a cappella groups.

On Monday, at Marsh Jam, soon-to-be rushees were on the edges of their seats as the Whiffs finished their song with a flair and passing around a flask until it reached their final member. When the final note concluded shortly after 10 p.m., Singing Group Council co-chair Isabelle Millman ’26 announced that audition signups had officially begun. Though signups for audition slots were also available online,

a crowd soon formed outside the auditorium, where different a cappella groups had set up tables. Some students waited until roughly 11:45 p.m. — nearly two hours after the showcase concert ended — to sign up to audition. Isabel Baxter-Paris ’29 felt that waiting in line to sign-up was an important way to meet group members.

“I was definitely interested in meeting as many people as possible, just because if you do end up in one of the groups, you’re gonna be spending a lot of time with them,” Baxter-Paris said. “I just feel like it’s better to experience that in person.”

Some, like Kehinde Sowemimo ’29, were waiting outside the hall

before Marsh Jam even ended.

Sowemimo said she was trying to “strategically work” through the lines and ended up being first in line to sign up to audition for Shades of Yale.

Sowemimo said she has been watching Shades’ performances online for over a year and feels the group would feel like “home” if she got an offer to join. Shades often sings her preferred style of music, R&B, which she recalled hearing in her home, the south side of Chicago.

“I love to sing, so why not sing with people who look like me and like the same music as me?”

Sowemimo said.

During the recruitment process, a cappella groups selectively choose

new members, but rushees also have choices to make about what they want in a group.

Some, like Baxter-Paris, are drawn to musical styles familiar to them. Others, like Sarah-nhi Nguyen ’29, had different criteria. Nguyen, who said she has no music background, said she likes to see “enthusiasm” and “passion” when the groups are performing.

“I really like it when groups have fun dance routines, or they smile when they’re singing and look at each other,” Nguyen said. “I really like the more interactive groups.”

The Singing Group Council, which is made up of five co-chairs selected from members of various a cappella groups, oversees the recruitment process to ensure that it is fair and equitable, according to SGC member Angélique Wheeler ’26.

At an a cappella rush information session last Wednesday, Peyton Lotwis ’26.5 told prospective rushees that the recruitment process is ultimately tailored to them and their experience.

“You learn to come out of the experience with nothing but wonderful memories and profound trust and gratefulness for the people that you’ve gotten to spend this time singing with,” Lotwis said. She said rushees should trust the feeling that they have met a “really special group of friends.”

But for other rushees, joining an a cappella group might not be so straightforward.

Wheeler, for example, joined Red Hot and Blue in the spring of her first year after failing to get tapped by any a cappella groups in the fall.

“Sometimes things don’t work out the way that you want them to, and sometimes it can be really hard and challenging. That’s just one of the things about college and life,” Wheeler said. “Sometimes you just have to try again at a different time and it’ll work out better.”

The first round of auditions begins Thursday, Sept. 4.

Contact KIVA BANK at kiva.bank@yale.edu

KIVA BANK / CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER The Dance Jam event showcased a range of Yale-affiliated dance groups to first years before auditions to join begin.

SHAKYA/ PHOTOGRAPHY

“Summer has always been good to me, even the bittersweet end, with the

The only summer: Medical students reflect on summers after first year

BY EDDIS MESIC STAFF REPORTER

While the end of each spring semester usually means a few months off from school for Yale undergraduates, medical students typically only get one summer break during their four-year journey at the School of Medicine.

Rising third and fourth-year students at the School of Medicine have a summer academic term that begins just a few days after their spring term. But rising second-year students have from mid-June until early September to recharge, reflect and make use of the extra time away from their studies.

“In terms of preventing burnout, we have some time to just take a step back and do things a little slower, which meant a lot,” Aish Bhattacharya MED ’28 said.

The News spoke to three second-year medical students about how they spent the summer.

From the army to a honeymoon

For Justus Gabriel MED ’28, the summer was a busy but enjoyable time.

A graduate of West Point and recipient of the Army’s Health Professions Scholarship Program scholarship, Gabriel started off the summer in San Antonio with some military training and then married his wife Julia Ross in her home state of Colorado. The two first met at West Point and enjoyed their honeymoon in the Dominican Republic.

Gabriel said the large chunk of time off school during the summer made it a great time for the two to get married.

Following the celebrations, Gabriel spent some time in Savannah, Ga. — where his wife is stationed — while working on two remote projects with doctors at Yale New Haven Hospital before returning to Yale.

In one of his projects, Gabriel is working with an endocrine surgeon to build a database to better characterize a rare type of thyroid cancer. In the other, he is studying pancreatic cancer and aims to better understand the best timing of chemotherapy cycles and other factors that can influence patient survival.

Looking ahead, following his time at Yale and residency, Gabriel will complete four years

of service commitment to the army as an army doctor.

“I’m definitely excited for my time in the army,” Gabriel said. “I might have to see if it’s something I want to stick with, or just transition over to the civilian side after I finish my service commitment.”

Research and recharge

Like many others in the summer between the first two years of medical school, Aish Bhattacharya focused mainly on research, while also leaving some time to visit family and explore the New Haven food scene with friends.

According to Bhattacharya, summer research is a great way for medical students to get a competitive edge in residency applications while contributing to a project that interests them.

Coming into Yale with a passion for public health, Bhattacharya spent the summer at the lab of Anne Mongiu, an assistant professor of surgery. Bhattacharya worked on developing food swamp indexes for Connecticut and studied the relationship between unhealthy food options and the rising incidence of early onset colorectal cancer in patients under 50.

While Bhattacharya was able to begin research during her first year, she said that juggling academic commitments alongside research can prove difficult. With more time over the summer to build a foundation for her project, she hopes to expand her

research focus to inflammatory bowel and other cancers in the academic year.

Bhattacharya said incoming medical students should find a research topic they are truly interested in and take advantage of the summer to develop their projects.

“Having a dedicated time to really sit down and not really be thinking about learning material, but use your brain in a very different way to just focus on the projects that you’re interested in and passionate about, I think is really powerful,” Bhattacharya told the News.

Going global

While many of her peers might have stayed back home, Ella Zhang MED ’28 traveled abroad to pursue global health research in Tanzania.

Working in one of the national hospitals in Dar es Salaam — the biggest city in Tanzania — Zhang focused on patients there with liver cancer and how barriers to accessing care impact their treatment.

“It was really an unforgettable experience to be able to live and work in such a drastically different culture and setting than I’m used to,” Zhang said.

Zhang also helped run a summer program called Yale Global Health Students United for Regional and

Global Education, a program that brings together medical and professional students from around the world to discuss issues related to global health. Zhang recalled spending Saturdays on Zoom with dozens of students from numerous different countries talking about and presenting on different global health topics.

Zhang said she had always wanted to study abroad, but COVID-19 cut her plans short during the middle of her time in college.

“I’ve had an interest in global health for a while, just as a product of, you know, growing up in a family that tended to move around a lot, I got to experience a lot of different cultures,” Zhang noted. Upon starting medical school, Zhang said she often thought about how material she learned in class applied to different areas of the world. Zhang found some global health funding opportunities to apply to and received a fellowship to conduct research in Tanzania.

Contact EDIS MESIC at edis.mesic@yale.edu .

Efforts to find missing Ukrainian children sustained by individual donors

BY KALINA BROOKFIELD STAFF REPORTER

Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab, whose work includes locating abducted Ukrainian children, survived federal funding cuts through private donor contributions.

The lab at the School of Public Health was launched in 2022 with $6 million in federal funding, but in February the State Department withheld its funding. The lab was nearly forced to close shortly after its funding was paused, but, thanks to donations to the lab through a special fundraiser, its staff now expects to be able to continue their work until January, according to Nathaniel Raymond, the lab’s executive director.

The lab uses satellite imagery and open source data to protect populations in crisis zones throughout the world. It is currently investigating the alleged trafficking of over 19,000 Ukrainian children to Russia.

“It has been the best of times and the worst of times,” Raymond said.

Since losing its funding, the lab has been operating in a state of uncertainty, according to Raymond. He described the difficulty of staff wondering month to month whether they will still hold a job and whether the mission of their lab will be able to continue. The team has had to reconstitute many of the systems and procedures it had relied on over the past three and a half years working with the U.S. government, Raymond said.

However, Raymond said, the loss of funding from the government has also provided the lab’s staff with a chance to see the public’s support for their work and interact with the people who directly support them.

“We’ve been able to experience something that academic

research organizations very rarely ever experience, which is the people you’re doing the research on behalf of coming to save you in your hour of greatest need,” Raymond said.

Raymond described how gratifying the past months have been, receiving support and donations from ordinary people who care deeply for the cause in place of typical academic grants.

Fundraising to sustain the lab’s work has revealed the relationships between the researchers and the public, especially Ukrainian American communities and activists.

For Marta Fedoriw, a member of the Ukrainian National Women’s League of America, the Humanitarian Research Lab’s research was her introduction to the kidnappings occurring in Ukraine. She first learned of the abductions in 2023, from a “60 Minutes” television segment that featured findings from the lab.

“That’s when I began the Return Ukraine’s Children initiative within the national organization,” Fedoriw said. “It was based on these findings being factual and something that we could depend on.” Now, in her position as chair of the Return Ukraine’s Children initiative within the Ukrainian American women’s league, Fedoriw has helped to publicize the lab’s work and encourage donations to it.

The lab has received significant support from Yale alumni, as well as elected officials on both sides of the aisle. A bipartisan letter signed in June by 30 members of Congress — two of them Republicans — urged the State Department to maintain funding for the lab’s Ukraine Conflict Observatory. The lab is working to find support from non-U.S. governments and larger-scale philanthropic organizations.

“The lab has been the preeminent source of information and diligent work for years, a respected, unbiased, un-politically-affiliated group doing this incredibly important work,” Lydia Zaininger, the executive director of the Ukrainian Institute of America, said.

The lab’s current investigation efforts consist of determining the total number of Ukrainian children in Russian custody, identifying those

children by name and determining where the children are located.

Prior to this project, the lab’s work had been geared towards documenting violations of international law and holding perpetrators accountable. Now, Raymond said, its research aims to contribute to the rescue of the captured children.

According to Raymond, the lab is on track to release its first report since the State Depart -

ment defunding before the United Nations General Assembly in September. The report is expected to contain research supporting negotiation and other means of return for the children.

The Humanitarian Research Lab’s office is located in the School of Public Health building at 60 College St. Contact KALINA BROOKFIELD at kalina.brookfield@yale.edu .

PAUL MONETTE AUTHOR

YULIN ZHEN

COURTESY OF JUSTUS GABRIEL

Justus Gabriel and his wife, Julia Ross celebrating their wedding at Fort Collins, Colorado.

COURTESY OF ELLA ZHANG Ella Zhang on an animal safari in Mekumi National Park in Tanzania.

COURTESY OF AISH BHATTACHARYA

SPORTS

Bulldogs win national honors

New York — an eight-hour trip — with nothing but our jerseys and a cheap hotel at the end of our journey,” Columbia-Walsh said. “The next morning, we started the playoffs, and we knew that our brotherhood had taken us far.”

That playoff run set the stage for the two players’ individual recognition. Columbia-Walsh, the club’s former president, was selected as a First-Team All-American, and Dufallo, the team captain, was selected as a Second-Team All-American. Both were also named to the North Atlantic All-Regional First Team.

For Dufallo, who played Amateur Athletic Union basketball for six years and high school varsity basketball for two, joining the club team was a no-brainer when came to Yale.

However, it would’ve been hard to predict how successful his college club basketball career has been so far.

“I was pretty surprised, as I did not expect to receive the award, but it felt great for Brennan and I to be recognized for all the hard work we put into the team this year,” Dufallo told the News.

He added that other teammates — such as Owen Zhang ’26, Henry Aguirre ’26 and Thai Sapenter ’26 — also deserved recognition.

“I really view this as a team award more than anything,” Dufallo said.

Basketball has also been a major part of Columbia-Walsh’s life. A four-year varsity starter and twoyear captain in high school, he scored 1,000 points before coming to Yale and once considered playing Division III basketball.

“I love basketball and come from a basketball family, so getting a nod

as a First-Team All-American was an honor after over a decade in the game,” Columbia-Walsh told the News. He also described the award as a collective success for the team.

Columbia-Walsh said the team has made progress on building camaraderie in recent years.

“We are a class of nearly ten guys who entered a team that was struggling to garner real commitment at practices and games,”

Columbia-Walsh told the News.

“Over the course of three seasons, we didn't just find the commitment; we packed our tryouts, flipped our record, made it to the playoffs and even got some All-American nods.”

Zhang, another player on the team, praised the team’s combination of hard work and deep personal connections.

“I was drawn to the team because I wanted to keep playing competitive basketball while at Yale, but in an environment that balanced competition and community,” Zhang said. “My first impression was that the guys were both serious about winning and laid-back enough to enjoy the experience.”

As Yale Club Men’s Basketball gears up for a new season, its players are hoping to continue their string of impressive performances from past seasons and continue expanding their culture of competition and community.

“We want to continue to provide our young guys with the opportunity that others provided us: to play excellent club basketball alongside best friends,” Columbia-Walsh said.

The club sports directory lists 49 teams.

Contact DAVIS ZONG at davis.zong@yale.edu

FIELD HOCKEY: Bulldogs prepare for opening game

BY AVA JENKINS STAFF REPORTER

Yale’s field hockey team has been preparing for the start of its season, which opens Friday at home on Johnson Field with a game against Long Island University.

The Bulldogs began their preseason preparations on Aug. 17 with much to build on after a strong season last year, in which they dramatically improved their statistics in both goals scored and goals allowed.

“We have had a longer preseason than last year which has allowed us more time to gel as a team and get to know our freshmen,” Poppy Beales ’26 wrote to the News.

Core coaching staff and key players will return this fall along with seven first years. Head coach Melissa Gonzalez and assistant coach Kerry Kiddoo are entering their fourth season leading the Bulldogs.

Both the 2023 and 2024 seasons ended with the Elis falling short of the Ivy League tournament. This season, they are looking to reach that goal.

“Each season feels like a fresh start in the Ivy League competition,” Victoria Collee ’28 told the News. “We all start at zero again. This gives us the chance to reset while we build on what we have learned from previous years.”

Yale’s forward group features seven players, including two seniors, one junior, three sophomores and one first year. Senior captain Beales leads the attack after earning first team All-Ivy and All-Region honors for the second time in 2024. Beales finished last season with six goals and five career game-winners.

Fellow senior Lauren Venter ’26 matched Beales’ goal total and appeared in all 16 games last year. Last season, Venter became a major asset for the Bulldog’s attack and takes that momentum with her this year.

The team saw a new face making a major impact last season with Chiara Picciafuoco ’28 earning Ivy League Rookie of the Year and second team All-American honors. Picciafuoco finished second on the team in points.

Sophomores Ymre Massée ’28 and Gigi Caldero ’28 also bring versatility and scoring potential, while junior Tabs Collier ’27 and firstyear standout Ella Ou ’29, a fivetime Nexus Championship selection, round out the group.

In the midfield, Yale returns five players, including junior Emma Ramsey ’27, who has earned All-Ivy honors each season and recently competed at the Nexus Championship. Sophomores Kaitlyn Chang ’28 and Collee both played key roles last year.

Collee notched four goals and three assists as a consistent starter last year, while Chang appeared in 14 games and participated in the U-21 National Team Selection Camp this summer. Collee also earned second team National Field Hockey Coaches Association All-Mideast Region and second team All-Ivy League recognition.

First years Carys Donahoe ’29 and Emma Mueller ’29 add depth and promise, both bringing years of Nexus experience and top national MAX Field Hockey rankings. Defensively, the Bulldogs return six backs, led by junior Hettie Whit-

tington ’27, last season’s team Player of the Year and a first team All-Ivy and All-Mideast Region selection. Whittington was also the teams highest scorer putting up 17 points. In goal, Fev Barinova ’28 returns for her second year, with experience training with Lithuania’s under-21 national team. Yale has added two first years to the position: Amelie Schwarzkopf ’29, who played in Germany’s top league and for the under18 national team, and Maddie Shepherd ’29, a member of Scotland’s under-18 squad.

“We’re in a good spot ahead of our first games. We beat University of Massachusetts-Amherst in our spring scrimmage while they were ranked fourth nationally, and we have good momentum from our scrimmage win this fall,” Venter told the News. “We are just focused on achieving our goals on our merit, rather than hoping the cards fall our way in the results of the other Ivy League games.”

The Bulldogs’ 16-game regular season begins this weekend, with two games at home. The seven conference games begin at Brown on Sept. 20, and the Elis will play nine non-conference games.

Contact AVA JENKINS at ava.jenkins@yale.edu .

Keith Allain retires after historic men’s hockey tenure

BY BAALA SHAKYA STAFF REPORTER

Keith Allain ’80 — the winningest coach in Yale men’s hockey history and the architect of the program’s sole national championship — announced his retirement on Aug. 8 after 19 seasons of coaching.

Allain’s announcement came just under two months before the Bulldogs are set to open their season in October. No immediate reason was given for his decision. Assistant coach Joe Howe will serve as interim head coach for the upcoming campaign, according to a Yale Athletics news release.

“Serving as Yale’s head hockey coach has been one of the greatest joys of my life,” Allain said in a statement included in the news release. Howe, who has been with Yale since 2021, will take over this season, bringing experience from coaching

stints at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the University of Denver, as well as with USA Hockey’s under17 and under-18 national teams. In an email to the News, Howe credited Allain for building a successful program “the right way,” by caring “deeply about his players and how they develop as people as much as hockey players.” The University announced that a nationwide search for the team’s next head coach will begin after this winter’s season concludes.

After taking over in 2006, Allain led Yale to the 2013 national championship, as well as to seven Ivy League titles and six NCAA Tournament appearances.

Forward Micah Berger ’28 told the News that Allain’s career at Yale was “truly legendary,” and that he was grateful to play and learn from him before he retired.

“He cared for each of us deeply and wanted us all to succeed. He

was turning us into successful men who were prepared for the real world,” Berger wrote to the News.

Under Allain’s leadership in 2013, the 15th-seeded Bulldogs stunned the college hockey world by defeating three top seeds, including No. 1 Quinnipiac in the title game, according to Yale Athletics. This was the first and only time Yale took home a national championship.

From 2008 to 2011, Allain’s Bulldogs had the best winning percentage in Division I hockey at 0.752.

The 2010-11 team became Yale’s first to be ranked No. 1 nationally and won the ECAC Championship.

For Allain’s son, Nik Allain ’24, his father’s retirement marked the end of an era.

“Playing for Yale — and for him — was really special for me,” Nik Allain said. “I pretty much grew up at Ingalls rink watching him coach, so to actually play

for him there was really cool. I don’t think I fully appreciated it until after the fact. I got to go to the rink every day and be with my dad, and my dad got to go to work every day and see his son, so it’s pretty special.” David Chen ’26, this year’s captain, said Allain’s coaching focused on both competitive excellence and character building.

“Coach Allain embodies what Yale hockey is all about,” Chen said. “He coaches with passion and emphasizes the importance of playing for something much bigger than yourself. He always tells the players that playing for Yale hockey is a privilege that we should never take for granted.”

Echoing Chen, Tucker Hartmann ’26 said that Allain was a “relentless competitor who brought intensity, drive and passion every day at the rink.” Yale hockey would “forever be grateful” for Allain’s contributions, he said.

“To me, he was a huge reason why I chose to play hockey at Yale when I was still playing back in the day,” Rob O’Gara ’16, a defenseman on the 2013 championship team and now a Yale assistant coach, said. “ He is the reason that I got into coaching afterwards, and his experience, his dedication to the program — it’s unmatched, really.”

O’Gara credited Allain’s leadership for making the 2013 championship run possible.

Regardless of what comes next, O’Gara said Allain’s influence will continue to shape the program.

“That legacy is going to be honored long, long after he walks out of that rink for the last time,” he said.

Allain was named the 11th head coach of the Yale men’s hockey program on April 15, 2006.

Contact BAALA SHAKYA at baala.shakya@yale.edu .

season will begin with two home games this weekend.

YALE ATHLETICS

Under Allain’s 19 years at the helm, the Bulldogs won their first and only national championship.

“Summer will end soon enough, and childhood as well.”

GEORGE R.R. MARTIN AUTHOR

New Haven man identified as victim of electrocution at Golf Course

BY JAKE ROBBINS AND ADELE HAEG STAFF REPORTERS

The man who died while working at Yale’s golf course last week was identified Friday as Luís Alberto Morocho Marcatoma, 54, of New Haven.

Yale’s head of public safety, Duane Lovello, released Marcatoma’s name in an email to the News. Marcatoma, a contractor working on a restoration project at the Yale Golf Course, died on Thursday, Aug. 21, after being electrocuted by a downed power line, according to a previous statement from Yale’s media office.

The Yale Police Department did not identify the victim for a week after the incident. The Connecticut medical examiner’s office, which deemed the electrocution death an accident, has declined to name him.

Marcatoma was born in Ecuador and moved to New Haven two years ago, according to an online obituary posted Tuesday. He spent most of his life in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and lived in Spring Valley, N.Y., for a year

before arriving in New Haven, the tribute says.

The obituary describes Marcatoma as a devoted husband, father and grandfather who cherished spending time with his loved ones. He enjoyed watching volleyball and soccer and “very much appreciated nature, the green fields, lakes and wild animals,” the obituary says. In his eyes, the obituary says, “everything was beautiful,” and he encouraged others to value God.

Marcatoma’s family and friends held a visitation time at a North Haven funeral home on Wednesday, according to plans outlined in the Tuesday obituary.

Marcatoma is survived by his wife, three children, seven siblings and a large extended family in Ecuador and the United States, according to the obituary.

He was expected to be buried in Ecuador.

The News was not immediately able to contact Marcatoma’s family.

The circumstances surrounding the electrocution incident — including the nature of Marcatoma’s

work — remain unclear. Yale Police Chief Anthony Campbell ’95 DIV ’09 previously told the News that Lovello, Yale’s top public safety administrator, had personally examined the scene.

“There is no additional information being released at this time,” Lovello wrote Friday in the email identifying Marcatoma.

Eastern Land Management President and CEO Bruce Moore Jr. expressed sympathy for the victim on Monday, August 25 in a statement to the News without naming him.

“Our focus has been supporting our employee’s family and our team members that were affected by this tragic accident,” Moore wrote.

The Yale University Golf Course, which has been closed for restoration since 2023, is located at 200 Conrad Dr. Sabrina Thaler contributed reporting.

Contact JAKE ROBBINS at jake.robbins@yale.edu.and ADELE HAEG at adele.haeg@yale.edu.

New Haven continues flood mitigation efforts despite FEMA cuts

BY KINNIA CHEUK STAFF REPORTER

By 2050, New Haven can expect to see up to 20 inches of sea level rise from the late-20th century average, according to estimates from the Connecticut Institute for Resilience & Climate Adaptation, or CIRCA.

But it might not take that long for New Haven residents to feel the water rising.

“Before New Haven is submerged, the losses due to this more frequent flooding will have driven people to move,” James O’Donnell, executive director of CIRCA, said.

New Haven has seen a number of unusually severe floods in the past few years, including severe flooding from Hurricane Ida in early September 2021. Since then, the city has dedicated hundreds of millions of federal dollars to expanding flood prevention infrastructure, including downtown drainage systems and a flood wall protecting I-95.

As hurricane season continues in full force, the News spoke with scientists and city leaders about ongoing efforts to mitigate flooding in New Haven and account for recent cuts to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA.

Sea level rise multiplies flooding risk

Scientists are able to anticipate the tidal forces that drive fluctuations in water level, but severe storms and hurricanes cause changes in water level that defy these regular fluctuations.

These storms are what cause flooding in coastal cities like New Haven, O’Donnell said.

In the worst case scenario, by 2050, New Haven’s mean sea level will be 20 inches higher than the baseline sea level — an average of mean sea levels between 1983 and 2001. A more likely estimate would still put the city’s mean sea level at more than 10 inches higher than the baseline, according to O’Donnell’s research.

The prediction is very similar for many other Connecticut cities along the Long Island Sound, including Bridgeport and New London. Even small increments of mean sea level rise can cause anomalously high sea levels to become much more frequent, significantly raising a community’s risk of flooding, O’Donnell said.

New Haven is very unlikely to be fully submerged in water in the near future. Instead, the real danger of mean sea level rise is more frequent flooding, O’Donnell said.

City speeds ahead with flood infrastructure, despite uncertainty

New Haven has long invested in green stormwater infrastructure and flood mitigation efforts, Giovanni Zinn, New Haven city engineer, said.

But one of the city’s largest flood mitigation projects stalled indefinitely after FEMA ended its Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, or BRIC, in April.

In 2022, New Haven received $25 million through BRIC, supplemented by $10 million in state funds, to construct a reinforced drainage system from under the railyard downtown to

the harbor. The proposed pipe would also connect to the Long Wharf pump station as part of an Army Corps of Engineers project.

While New Haven has already received around $380,000 in funds from FEMA and wrapped up the design phase of the project, it has not secured a contract for the second phase, which would allow the city to access the bulk of the funding, Zinn said.

“The problems we have are very real, and they’re very present today, and we would have to keep working on other avenues for funding,” Zinn said. “The city wouldn’t be able to foot the whole thing itself, it would rely on state programs or other federal programs.”

Connecticut and 19 other states are currently suing the Trump administration over the funding cuts, which they allege to be “unlawful.”

“Until some of the funding cuts, we had a very robust program that a lot of other communities wanted to learn more about and understand what we were doing,” Zinn said.

New Haven’s massive $160 million project to build a flood barrier, flood gates and a new pump station to protect I-95, Union Station and the railyard from future storm surge will remain intact, Zinn told the News.

The project is led by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Moreover, two “living shoreline” projects in East Shore Park and Long Wharf Park, each around 3,000 feet in length, have just gone through the permitting process and are approved for construction in the next year, Zinn added.

Living shorelines, alternatives to traditional concrete seawalls that prevent flooding, use natural materials to mitigate rising sea levels, according to nonprofit Save the Sound.

Zinn stressed the importance of the many “little projects” the city has been doing to mitigate the impacts of storms.

To date, the city has installed almost 200 bioswales downtown to divert rainwater out of storm sewer systems to deal with the increased frequency of intense rain events, according to Zinn.

State climate laws incorporate flood risk into planning

New climate laws signed into law by Gov. Ned Lamont in June require key state and local documents to take into account the impacts of climate change and sea level rise in zoning and planning.

The new state regulations increase the amount of informa -

tion that insurers are required to provide to homeowners or renters, including the availability of flood insurance, said Charles Rothenberger, director of Connecticut Government Relations at Save the Sound.

“It tries to steer, gently, residential development away from the most sensitive areas,” Rothenberger said. The act also authorizes municipalities to create “resiliency improvement districts” that allow for additional property tax overlay to help finance local projects that protect infrastructure from the effects of climate change.

New Haven is currently not planning any resiliency improvement districts, Steven Winter, director of the city’s Office of Climate and Sustainability told the News.

The Connecticut coastline spans more than 600 miles.

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

Organizations gather to call attention to opioid overdoses

BY MICHELLE SO STAFF REPORTER

As Fiona Firine, the president and co-founder of For Cameron, explained the origin of her nonprofit organization, she handed visitors to her booth on the New Haven Green purple ribbons joined neatly with golden safety pins — symbols of solidarity for drug overdose awareness. Firine and the other women at the table had lost loved ones due to the opioid crisis. After being prescribed opioids after a football injury at age 12, Firine’s son, Cameron, struggled for decades before coming clean. He was studying to become a recovery coach at Gateway Community College but relapsed. Cameron died in 2018, at age 27, from a fentanyl pressed pill.

“Even though we’re a very shy family, we decided we needed to go public, because if this could happen to us, it could happen to anybody,” Firine said.

For Cameron and over 25 other organizations filled the Chapel Street and Church Street corner of the Green on Friday with tents and loud music for a public health and wellness fair.

The annual observance of International Overdose Awareness Day,

organized by Cornell-Scott Hill Health Center and the New Haven Health Department, united under the theme “One Big Family, Driven by Hope.” Health care professionals, family members and resource officers aimed to destigmatize drug users and remember those who were lost in the drug crisis. At 1:15 p.m., an hour into the event, Mayor Justin Elicker offered remarks, along with Connecticut Comptroller Sean Scanlon, New Haven public health director Maritza Bond and others.

“I think every one of us knows at least one person that is struggling with substance use disorder, with addiction right now, and it is tragic to see the number of people that we have lost in our community over the years,” Elicker said.

Elicker went on to praise New Haven’s drug response program, police training and New Haven Free Public Library staffers — who he said “have used Narcan to save people’s lives in the library.”

Scanlon, following Elicker, nodded to the federal cuts to Medicaid, calling the program “the single largest insurer in the United States of America for treating people with mental illness and substance-use disorder.” Under a Cornell-Scott Hill

Health Center tent, Melissa Zuppardi stretched across a multicolored array of yoga mats. She has worked with the health center for over 16 years and recently became the assistant program director for its new Recovery and Wellness Center.

“This has affected my life, between friends, family, loved ones in many different areas, since the 2000s, and prescription pain medications were kind of driving up overdose rates and substance use disorders,” Zuppardi said. “So I got into this field just by having a lot of friends who used and I professionally and personally lost multiple people.”

The Recovery and Wellness Center offers over 50 beds to recovering addicts and provides services including dental care, recovery coaches and psychiatric services.

Zuppardi said her goal is to humanize drug treatment and make sure people who are using drugs understand that the goal of many treatment facilities is to help, not to scold.

“We need to reduce shame and stigma so people are able to come forward and ask for help,” Zuppardi said.

Under another tent, Kathy Eggert, the director of the APT Foundation, oversaw her staff and volunteers taking people’s blood pressures, training

people on proper needle usage and passing out flyers and snacks. They also handed out naloxone, an opioid overdose reversal drug.

“One of my passions is really combating against stigma,” Eggert told the News.

“For me, what’s always exciting is if a patient that’s moved on from our facility comes and says hi,” she added.

As Connecticut and the rest of the United States continue to battle the opioid crisis, many, like Firine, still

grieve those who were lost, but are determined to change the future of the drug epidemic.

“If we had used the COVID model and we had put out public messaging, we would have saved a lot of lives, because people don’t realize it’s a disease,” Firine said.

Cornell Scott-Hill Health Center is located at 400 Columbus Ave.

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

JAKE ROBBINS / CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Luís Alberto Morocho Marcatoma, 54, was born in Ecuador and spent most of his life there, according to an obituary describing him as a lover of the outdoors.

CHRISTINA LEE

As sea level rise compounds flooding risk in New Haven, local leaders continue to push mitigation efforts despite federal cuts.

MICHELLE SO / CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Representatives from over 25 organizations gathered on the New Haven Green to raise awareness for drug overdoses and commemorate people lost in the opioid crisis.

“Summer’s lease hath all too short a date.” WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, SONNET 18

Directed Studies waitlist highest in known records

BY JAEHA JANG STAFF REPORTER

More than 110 first-year students were waitlisted for the Directed Studies program this fall, according to Katja Lindskog, the program’s director of undergraduate studies.

The waitlist for the 120-person year-long Great Books program is the largest in the past decade. This jump follows an upward trend in interest since around the 20192020 academic year, Lindskog wrote to the News.

“There may be something about this moment that draws students to the program,” Daniel Schillinger, who teaches history and political thought for the program, wrote to the News.

“When the world is so unsettled, when opinions are shifting, fundamental questions come to the fore; old books appear in a new light.”

The program is generally appealing because of its tight-knit community and “electric” seminars, Schillinger added.

Directed Studies, known to students as DS, is an intensive two-semester program for Yale College first years that offers a survey of Western canon. Founded in 1947 to preserve the liberal arts tradition, the application-based program offers a set of three courses on literature, philosophy, and historical and political thought.

In an Aug. 12 email obtained by the News, Lindskog reached out to the first 25 students on the waitlist, writing that they had a “decent (but NOT guaranteed!) chance” of joining the program. She further encouraged students to keep some time blocks open for the program’s mandatory lectures and recommended courses adjacent to the curriculum.

Separate emails were sent to students on the waitlist who were between 25th and 50th, as well as those who were 50th and beyond, advising students to keep an eye out for other classes, according to students who received the emails.

Premmie Mepremwattana ’29, a waitlisted student, grasped this year’s uniquely high interest in Directed Studies after talking to some upperclassmen about the program, she said in an interview. Upperclassmen told her, “you can get off the waitlist if you really wanted to,” but Mepremwattana said she didn’t think that was the case this year, having heard of the more than 100-person-long waitlist.

Mepremwattana was disappointed when she received an email from the program informing her that she was between 25th and 50th on the waitlist, she said.

“Who knows? I could be 50th,” she said. “I feel like the odds were really low.”

Mepremwattana added that the program “did a really good job” communicating with waitlisted students. The program provided contacts of formerly waitlisted students and offered invitations to its book fair and information sessions, she said.

Neslo Atilla ’29, who got off the waitlist, said she felt exhilarated upon hearing the news. It was the morning after she returned from her First-Year Outdoor Orientation trip when she received an email from the program.

“I just kinda stood there for a moment,” she said. “Like, after all that waiting, is this real? I was really happy.”

Atilla added that getting on the waitlist itself was an accomplishment for her. When she received an email informing her that she was one of the top 25 students on the waitlist, Atilla said she was “excited” that the program was letting her know she had a strong opportunity to take part in its studies.

“At the same time, it felt a bit like being in limbo because I just registered for an alternative slate of classes that I would have taken if I didn’t get into DS,” she said. “But imagine receiving that email that you’re number 100 on the waitlist and being stuck in limbo for real.”

Atilla said she thinks the extent of the waitlist is “a little excessive,” especially when it’s clear that many students will never get off the waitlist.

Bryce Falkoff ’29 said he started considering a schedule outside of the program when he received an email informing him that he was below the 50th place on the waitlist.

He expected to get off the waitlist because of what he’d read online about Directed Studies admissions, but he said he quickly realized that wouldn’t be the case.

Eugenie Kim ’29, who was third on the waitlist as of Wednesday night, said while she thinks the program is “so, so, so fascinating,” she finds the uncertainty of the waitlist frustrating. Coming to Yale itself and exploring extracurricular activities has already been a “big wave of uncertainty,” she said, and the Directed Studies waitlist has added an extra layer.

While Lindskog emailed her this week to be cautiously optimistic about her chances, Kim said, she looks forward to moving on from the waitlist ––whether she ultimately gets into the program or not.

Levin Li ’29 said that he got off the waitlist on Aug. 25 but ultimately decided against taking the program. The curriculum was not compatible with the requirements for his prospective major, global affairs, he said, and he wanted to tackle his language requirement as well.

He said he felt he could still attain a liberal arts education outside of the program, citing Yale College’s distributional requirements.

“I hope someone else is enjoying their DS spot right now,” he said. Last year, 82 students were waitlisted for Directed Studies.

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

Student groups expand Narcan training and distribution

BY ASHER BOISKIN STAFF REPORTER

The Yale College Council and Yale Emergency Medical Services have scaled up opioid overdose response training and the distribution of emergency overdose medication, aiming to make overdose response a more common skill among students.

This semester, for the first time, YCC and YEMS trained nearly all firstyear counselors, or FroCos, on how to use Narcan kits, which can be used to quickly reverse an opioid overdose. The YCC also partnered with fraternities, sororities and other student groups to provide training and Narcan, hoping to give more students practical tools to respond to emergencies.

“Even though it was one of the shorter sessions of all our FroCo training, I feel like I actually learned the most from their presentation,” Gia Cook ’26, a FroCo in Davenport College, wrote to the News about the opioid overdose training. “Even with such a serious topic, they made everything feel very approachable and like something we could really use if needed.”

In the past year and a half, more than 250 students have completed the training. This year’s expansion follows years of advocacy.

In 2023, Narcan, a common fast-acting opioid overdose med -

ication, was available at one New Haven pharmacy, and YCC members purchased single doses to distribute. Narcan typically costs $40 to $60 per dose, which can be a barrier for many students.

Last September, the YCC approved a $4,577 proposal — co-sponsored by then-Ezra Stiles senator Surabhi Kumar ’26 and then-YCC president Mimi Papathanasopoulos ’26 — to fund Narcan kits for FroCos and cover stipends for training participants.

FroCos, who guide first-year students through their academic and social transitions to Yale, are often the first people contacted when first years experience emergencies, which is why FroCos were a focus of the early training stages.

Ava Ospina ’26, the YEMS chief, described naloxone as a “miracle drug,” citing its ability to reverse opioid overdoses without any adverse effects.

“This isn’t about encouraging drug use,” Ospina said. “It’s a public health measure with real, tangible outcomes in saving lives.”

The YCC’s push for increased naloxone programming includes training for student organizations that host large events, such as fraternities and sororities, and aims to address overdose risks in New Haven more broadly.

According to a December 2024 Connecticut Department of Public Health report, the state projected about 1,118 drug overdose deaths for 2024, a 16.4 percent decrease from 2023’s 1,338 deaths, with figures still in review.

“We don’t want to wait until something goes wrong before being prepared,” Kumar said. The YCC has pushed for Yale to fund the program in future years to ensure sustainability and to further integrate nalox -

LAMPSHADES AND STAINED GLASS: STERLING AT DUSK

Photos by

Ximena Solorzano Head Photography Editor

BY BRODY GILKISON STAFF REPORTER

As the football team creeps closer to its first game of the season, the squad is working hard to push through a dramatic turnover on its roster.

Forty-six players departed after last season, leaving the Yale coaching staff an unusually large gap to fill. Because of unique eligibility rules caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, fourth-, fifth- and sixth-year players trickled out last year.

To fill some of that gap, the team welcomed 23 new first-year players and several transfers.

Among these new faces, a key trend appears.

This year, the coaching staff focused on bolstering the trenches, bringing in 11 new linemen, both offensive and defensive. After two experienced starters on the offensive line graduated, the Bulldogs were looking for new depth to support the remaining passblockers.

On the defensive side of the ball, Yale lost its sack leader, Tamatoa McDonough ’25, who graduated and transferred to Iowa State.

The Bulldogs are also looking to replenish their special teams. After both long snapper Ben Mann ’25 and punter Shamus Florio ’25 graduated, Yale brought in a new punter and a long snapper — both from Rice — Reese Keeney ’28 and Colby Connell ’27.

“In terms of this season, I am so excited about where we are at in the

specialist room,” Keeney said in an interview. “Joey Fortner ’27 and Colby Connell have been throwing great snaps ever since I got with them in the summer.” Yale also brought in two new quarterbacks. After losing starting quarterback Grant Jordan ’25, who put together a

2300-yard and 27-touchdown season in nine games for the Bulldogs, and Bradyn Fleharty, who transferred to Ball State, the team was left with just two senior quarterbacks, Marshall Howe ’26 and Brogan McCaughey ’26.

To fill in the quarterback roster, Yale made a big splash by bringing

“It was a moral boost with how we held with them,” Andrew Seidman ’26 told the News.

BY DAVIS ZONG STAFF REPORTER

The Yale men’s soccer team opened its season with two losses over the weekend, falling to Sacred Heart, 3-1, and to Syracuse, 1-0.

Friday’s opener against Sacred Heart quickly turned into an uphill battle. With a header 20 minutes in and two additional goals at minutes 43 and 45, the Pioneers went up 3-0 in the first half, putting substantial pressure on Yale to bounce back.

The Bulldogs stayed resilient in the second half and fought back with a goal of their own. After Simon Adjakple ’27 fired a shot that was blocked, Sebi Roy ’29 finished the play, scoring his first career goal to put the Elis on the board. The Bulldogs’ late push wasn’t enough, though, and the match ended at 3-1 for the Pioneers.

“We had a huge wake-up call at halftime and I was very pleased with our response and effort to fight back and give ourselves a chance,” head coach Kylie Stannard said.

Two days later, the Elis hosted Syracuse in their home opener.

The Orange capitalized on a first-half opportunity and held that margin through the final whistle. Yale put on a strong fight, with six starters playing the full 90 minutes. Goalkeeper Conrad Lee ’26 kept the Bulldogs within striking distance, saving eight goals, including an early one-on-one stop against an Orange forward and a penalty denial late in the second half.

With so much of the game being decided by just a few quick plays, Lee, who had a particularly action-packed day as goalie, highlighted the importance of maintaining a strong mental focus throughout matches.

“Games like these are defined by individual moments,” Lee said.

“You cannot switch off — if you switch off for half a second, those moments get punished.”

Several players said the team showed a fighting spirit during the two tough games.

The Bulldogs remain optimistic as they prepare for conference matches. Team members attested to the team’s growth, both over the past month and from the first game to the second. With lots of players making their first appearances on the field, the Bulldogs view the opening matches as part of an adjustment phase.

The team now turns its focus to building consistency and turning competitive performances into results.

“There were a lot of good moments of how we applied the game plan, and it was good to see a good reaction to our match against Sacred Heart,” Lee, the goalkeeper, told the News. “I think the progress we made from that game to today can be seen as a step in the right direction.”

The Bulldogs are aiming to notch their first win of the season when they host Quinnipiac at Reese Stadium on Sep. 6.

Yale’s past record against Quinnipiac is 5–3–2, with a 2–1–1 record for home games and a recent win in their September 2024 encounter.

Contact DAVIS ZONG at davis.zong@yale.edu .

WEEKEND S U M M E R ‘S o

I was sitting around the table with my host family — the warm light of imminent dusk washing us in gold, when the awareness struck me. Amidst their shining eyes and doting offers, something was intruding. I could sense it ever so faintly. Its presence was nearly unnoticeable. In the brief stall of conversation, the next yet to begin, or in the sigh after a round of raucous laughter, I felt its eyes on me.

Dark and round as swimming pools of ink, they knocked the wind out of my lungs and the light from the room. Its eyes said simply: soon, this will all come to an end. Soon, this will be but a memory — I will be but a blip in their lives, and they but a blip in mine. Soon, all that will remain of this moment, this summer, will be memory. Memories I will come to forget.

Susan Sontag, in her anthology of essays, “Notes on Photography,” crystallizes the value of picturetaking: “All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s or thing’s mortality, vulnerability, mutability.” To photograph is to stop time — to arrest its “relentless melt” for just a singular moment.

I have long been an ardent fan of photography. I purchased my first DSLR at the age of 12 — after saving up all my birthday money and dragging my parents to a local camera shop — and my first disposable film camera at 13. When the photos proved terrible because I had cluelessly neglected the use of the flash, I purchased a tiny silver digital camera that I would carry in my pocket wherever I went. I filmed moments with my friends and photographed whatever I cared enough to preserve. But when the onslaught of high school and the insecurity arose, I came to discard the art. I did not want to be seen, least of all immortalized in my “lesser than” state of being.

As graduation began to approach, I realized I’d forgotten much of my life since the moment I relinquished my camera. I would spend lunches with my friends reconstructing our last few years

...but photos last forever

together rather than reminiscing. “How could you not remember?” they would cry, as I would shake my head in mutual disbelief. I had but a fragmented recollection of my teenage years. The stress of high school had led me to unwittingly block out most of my days. Save for a few blips of photo-taking — notably including beloved concerts and school trips to Indonesia and Italy — I could remember little else. I was horrified. I had forgotten my own life. So, when the shadowy presence of ephemerality revealed itself that one summer night in Spain, I felt myself reach for my camera. I clicked a photo of the dinner table. The image was hazy, and by no means a “great photo” if evaluated against the criteria used to determine one. But it was a memory eternalized — my memory eternalized — and that was enough. There is an innate peculiarity embedded within the act of photography. As the renowned essayist Susan Sontag explains, to capture a photograph is to inherently make a declaration against mortality and the inevitable decay of existence. Time marches forward, but a photograph preserves what will soon no longer be. This act of immortalization becomes even stranger once the quantum of social media is brought into question. Images, these days, exist within a virtual realm. We subject ourselves, willfully, to external perception, in a bid to be seen and remembered when separated by physical distance and time. On my Instagram — which I admittedly use religiously — you can see me at 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20. You can see my past vacations and my family and my best friends. You can see random glimpses of my day-to-day life in Singapore: videos of my friends and I sitting on the street at midnight, my favourite vinyl stores and the cinema I used to visit with the same veneration as Mecca itself. You can consume my memories and fragments of my reality and identity. I can feel myself being consumed. But is that truly me?

To photograph is to capture memory. But when we publish those photographs — as I now do across two Instagram accounts — do they remain mere memories? Or, do they undertake the transformation begotten of art; you perceive what I produce and formulate a viewpoint of what I have shown you. You decide what to make of my memories; my life. Does that change them? Am I thus an artist, a presenter, rather than a person, like you, trying to fight the onslaught of forgetfulness and mortality?

Since the summer, I have had scores of people approach me to tell me how much they have loved to watch me online. “I loved the photos.” “You were everywhere.” “I saw you.”

Since returning to campus, I have had several friends back home reach out to tell me how they have relished the photos I have posted of my first few days back — images of friends at the debaucherous functions of the most jovial time of year, Camp Yale.

“I love this show,” one said. My friends are now characters; me, a quasi-director.

I do not say this to inflate my self-importance, nor to frame myself as somebody worth looking at. I am not an influencer, nor do I ever wish to be one. What began as an act of desperate preservation over the summer has begun a phenomenon of demonstration. See my life, see my world. Let it be maintained in the corners of the internet and social media. Let me be remembered and seen. As time marches forward, changing you and changing me, these momentary iterations of myself will remain until we are nothing but bones beneath the earth and relics online. Does that unnerve you? Sometimes, it unnerves me.

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

// BY REETI MALHOTRA

A rich summer

// BY ZACHARY CLIFTON

In the stony, sun-struck village of Deià, Mallorca — a place of craggy cliffs and literary ghosts — not much has changed since 1929, when the poet Robert Graves first put down roots and wrote of finding “everything [he] wanted as a writer: sun, sea, mountains, spring water, shady trees, no politics and a few civilised luxuries such as electric light and a bus service to Palma.” The bus still exists, but the luxuries Graves once called “few and civilised” are now many and, in that distinctively 21st-century way, wildly excessive.

Today, Deià is less a village than a curated backdrop for the ultra-rich to cosplay as Bohemians. Princess Diana loved it. So did the Rolling Stones. Leonardo DiCaprio has been spotted there, and Sir Richard Branson owns a nearby estate.

On a hillside hairpin of the village thoroughfare, Carrer Son Canals, sits La Residencia, a Belmond hotel where even the most standard rooms come with a storybook view and the king suites run $4,947 a night

in June. The accommodations span two stone manor houses that are an eight-minute walk from La Casa de Robert Graves. Its 66 guest rooms, despite their prohibitive cost, account, locally, for much of where vacationers are able to stay. Economically, the rooms are perfect examples of luxury goods — consumption seems to rise with cost. But it doesn’t attract the kind of clientele looking for complimentary laundry services or insuite alcoholic drinks — though it offers both.

This summer, my family visited the Balearic village, staying a single night at a place without “delectable tapas,” which the Belmond advertises as “edible art” to be enjoyed in the company of 33 original paintings by Joan Miró. A Catalan artist, Miró is known for turning the mundane into the whimsical.

At La Residencia’s Restaurante Miró, wealthy diners prod at dazzling dishes that imitate the splashes of color in the Miró paintings on the walls. Waiters and waitresses bus trays of gratinated lobster in “herbs cream” and poached turbot medallion with champagne-and-caviar sauce on saffron pasta. Mirroring Miró’s art, the hotel management curates the space to turn the workers’ humdrum job of carrying expensive dishes into a whimsical dreamscape — garnishing meals with flowers from the island.

One dish comes with a fantastically fluorescent green sauce, an accompaniment that recalls “The Menu,” the searing food film about the exhaustingly pretentious appetite of the rich. Its color and other aesthetic qualities render it completely unappetizing. The appeal, for some, is in its exorbitant price.

Our Airbnb’s breakfast area had no art collection, just a small family room with a copy of Samin Nosrat’s “Salt Fat Acid Heat.”

The next morning, we ferried to Cala Deià, a rocky inlet of turquoise waters and Instagram fame. The ferry was a modest passenger boat, the undiscerning kind that carries sunburned tourists and olive-oil smugglers alike. Along the way, we passed two other vessels, each considerably larger than ours; unlike ours, they were intended for the enjoyment of a single family.

The first was Steven Spielberg’s. The other belonged to Eddie Lampert ’84, the Yale graduate, Bonesman and former Sears executive who steered the once-iconic retailer into the jaws of liquidation sometime between the rise of Amazon and the death of re-

tail-as-we-knew-it. But it wasn’t the owner that caught my eye — it was the chrome block letters hammered across its hull: “FOUNTAINHEAD.”

Yes, that “Fountainhead” — the Ayn Rand novel about a tortured architect who worships individualism, hates compromise, and believes the best way to build something beautiful is to blow up anything mediocre. Apparently, it’s still a favorite among billionaires who prefer its character to its writer’s message. Donald Trump once called it “a book about everything.” He wasn’t wrong — if your “everything” involves ego, ambition and an allergy to sharing humanity.

The reference grabbed my attention, but not because of Rand’s novel. The night before, I staved off jet lag with a new release on HBO Max. “Mountainhead,” a Jesse Armstrong film, seems written to skewer the exact kind of man who would name his megayacht after a libertarian manifesto –not that its modern use was Rand’s intention. Armstrong, who gave us “Succession,” has now turned his satirical gaze from an Avenue-of-the-Americas media dynasty to Silicon Valley oligarchs. “Mountainhead” isn’t just about wealth — it’s about the new frontier of narcissism: immortality achieved through technology.

The film follows a dying telecom mogul, played, with weary, Loro Piana-cashmere brilliance, by Steve Carell, who travels to a Utah poker weekend — a fictional stand-in for Deer Valley’s annual respite for millionaires and their billionaire companions — to pitch a cohort of AI boy-geniuses on uploading his consciousness to the cloud before his cancer gets him. It’s a comedy, technically, but only in the way Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove” is a comedy. Shivers follow laughter. The horror isn’t that these men want to live forever. It’s that they think they should and

Some men go to sea not to escape society but to avoid sharing it altogether.

will drag everyone along with them.

Marc Andreessen, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel and Mark Zuckerberg hover over Armstrong’s film like a shadow cast list. Each a kind of Peter Pan in corporate-branded Patagonia fleece, locked in a global game of capture-the-flag — except the flag is society’s souls. Just because they’re juvenile doesn’t mean they’re harmless. That’s the point. Armstrong appeared on Kara Swisher’s podcast following the release of “Mountainhead,” joking about how “The Fountainhead”

is the only fiction on display in places the ultra-rich call home. I listened to the two discuss the film on my flight home. “I’ve gone to so many billionaires’ houses,” Swisher said, “and they’re beautiful, but most of them feel like a Four Seasons. I’m often at [these] houses and they’re like, ‘Have you read The Fountainhead?’”

Swisher tells them “no.”

But, in Deià, as the sun bounced off the sea and into the steel serif of Lampert’s “FOUNTAINHEAD,” I thought of the platitude that “a poet’s mission is to make words do more work than they normally do, to make them work on more than one level,” attributed to a billionaire colleague of Lampert’s, Jay-Z. What does a yacht named “FOUNTAINHEAD” say? That some men go to sea not to escape society but to avoid sharing it al-

together. That taste can be inverse to net worth. That a town once known poetically for its idyllic, glassy waters that reflect light onto ships and shores now instead reflects the dreams, delusions and floating fortresses of a class that believes death is optional, but bad Wi-Fi is not.

Later this summer, after my flight home, these reflections returned when I sat for “The Good Life After the Age of Growth,” a lecture given by professor Daniel Markovits of Yale Law School. He criticized what he calls the “Growth Ideal,” the belief that societies, like individuals, must expand ceaselessly or fall behind. Growth once equalized fortunes, lifting the poor with each generation. But now, in the richest societies, it mainly consolidates at the top. I cried at the time the lecture was most salient. Markovits read an excerpt from James, chapter five: Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. I understood who that two-thousand-yearold passage had come to capture. The biblical anecdote passed. But I was still thinking. As we pulled into the Cala, a waiter served grilled octopus to a woman whose sunglasses probably cost as much as their flights. A child played with an Hermès beach paddle. The yachts glistened in the distance. I looked at them, then at my family and myself. I looked at my hands — flesh and bone, as they’ve been since the start — thinking that for all the talk of uploading our minds, we’re still in our bodies. Still bound to death. For a moment, I contemplated what it might be like to live forever. Then, I thought of all the beachhands, bartenders and boat captains who might not want to. Even if forever were left up to us.

Contact ZACHARY CLIFTON at zachary.clifton@yale.edu.

PHOTOS BY ZACHARY CLIFTON

The Summer I Started Watching Bad Television

“The Summer I Turned Pretty” has taken my Instagram feed by storm.

I can’t escape the Conrad Fisher edits and I’m not mad about it. What makes this show so magnetic that it’s the obsession of both middle-school girls and millennial mothers alike?

I first started watching the show when it aired back in 2022 as a high school junior whose favorite TV show was “Succession.” I watched passively with friends. I tolerated it but was never super eager to continue. That all changed this summer after the new season’s trailer dropped. It was all over the internet. Suddenly, the pop

culture pages I followed that usually covered Taylor Swift and Gracie Abrams music were posting season predictions and ranting about why Belly and Jeremiah were so very wrong together. Friends, random mutuals and half of my reels were talking about this show. After a few weeks, I finally gave in. I powered through a painfully poorly written season two — yes, I’m talking about the Skye and Cam Cameron kiss — just in time for the season three premiere. And thank God I did because the cultural buzz only got worse.

I believe that the immense, arguably unde-

served success of “The Summer I Turned Pretty” can ultimately be attributed to FOMO. No one — not even the preteens sneaking their iPads into their rooms past 10 p.m. — actually believes this show is good television. What they do believe is that it’s worth while to be in on the cul tural phenomenon that is “The Summer I Turned Pretty.” Say what you will about the writing, but Conrad versus Jeremiah has been the event of the summer.

My summer work environment was awkwardly quiet until the day I brought up “The Summer I Turned Pretty.” The mention

of the show instantly sparked debate. Even the coworkers who had only seen related reels had an opinion. Everyone else started watching it that night to keep up with the office gossip.

My first Wednesday back at Yale, I attended an episode watch party with my former suitemates. I hadn’t spoken to them since the spring, but with Jeremiah ragebait on the television, it was like no time had passed. We bonded over our love-hate relationship with the show we could all agree

people across campus were live-fizzing, tweeting and texting. People who had never seen the show before parked in front of the computer to feel like a part of something so big. It all goes to show, most of the appeal of “The Summer I Turned Pretty” isn’t the show itself. Whether you’re in a packed common room throwing popcorn at the screen alone scrolling through reels afterwards, you’re a part of the community.

Contact ISABEL

// BY ISABEL TIBURCIO

PERSONAL ESSAY

Churchwatching

// BY MADDIE BUTCHKO

I collect churches the way other people col lect stamps, except my hobby requires no money and considerably more moral flex ibility. I slip into sanctuaries during offhours, rather than the populated Sunday mass, lured by stained glass that scatters jeweled light across worn wooden floors like God’s own kaleidoscope.

My favorite specimens are Catho lic churches, where every surface tells a story in marble and gold leaf. But I’m not particular.

Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran. They all offer the same commodity: the chance to watch people laid bare in prayer.

I sit three pews back, close enough to study their gestures, far enough to pretend I’m not intruding. Honestly, I am more so people watching than church watching.

The most devout pray with such intensity they sometimes drift off mid-sentence — proof that even God’s most loyal can’t always stay awake on the job.

Mothers juggle toddlers and prayer requests, shushing children in a place meant for peace.

At times people cry. I invent reasons for their tears: divorce papers, medical bills, a son who just came out as a theater major.

I also wonder if prayer itself can become another mask.

The Hendersons, punctual as bells, kneel with textbook posture and sing hymns in perfect harmony.

Yet I’ve watched Mrs. Henderson snap at cashiers, seen Mr. Henderson cut off the elderly in the parking lot.

Their Sunday performance is immaculate, but their Wednesday character needs work.

This contradiction fascinates and troubles me. Christian theology says all are sinners in need of grace, yet I find myself obsessed with specifics of their possible transgressions. Their faces are clues to sins I’ll never know. Watching them, I wonder whether they want transformation or absolution through rehearsed ritual.

The distinction reveals whether forgiveness is medicine or morphine, whether it heals or just numbs the guilt long enough to repeat the same mistakes.

Idon’tfeelguilty. Afterall,that’s whatconfession isfor.

I’ve made a system of these voyeuristic pilgrimages. For each stranger, I draft an imaginary prayer, then tack on a “God bless them” as insurance. I don’t feel guilty. After all, that’s what confession is for.

Churches are contradictions: pub lic monuments for private encoun ters. When someone closes their eyes in silent confession, intimacy is performed in plain sight.

My presence turns their prayer into theater. The businessman hunched in his lunch hour. The teenage girl glaring at the crucifix with undis guised rage.

They become actors in my private drama.

I crave this rare moment of vulnerability. It’s the only place I see strangers stripped of their careful masks. But

The more I pry into their spiritual lives, the wider the routes I am willing to take to circumvent my own.

Cataloguing strangers’ prayers is easier than admitting what I might need to confess. When I invent prayers for them, I suspect I’m voicing my own unspoken needs through borrowed voices.

But I don’t invent their feelings. Grief, fear, longing. I know these well, even if the reasons behind them are different. I watch a man’s shoulders contract, pulling inward as if his body is trying to protect from the pain inside. His breathing shifts. First shallow and controlled, then fracturing into irregular gasps that sound like drowning on dry land. His body folds forward over the pew. Pain collapses the persona he carried through the doors. His suffering looks like mine.

Contact MADDIE BUTCHKO at maddie.butchko@yale.edu

PERSONAL ESSAY

My chronic globe-trotter friend has begun to refer to his summer travel in ‘legs.’ “June’s the Asian leg, then Ibiza kicks off the European leg next month,” he relayed to me at the beginning of summer.

The only legs I was seeing were those coming in and out of the fitting room at my minimum wage retail job. While my friend went clubbing in Tokyo, I spent my 30-minute break buried in overpriced athleisure in Alo Yoga’s windowless back room.

Seeking experience, pocket change and a new LinkedIn title, I started work a few weeks before my high school graduation. I made it through a grand total of two shifts before contemplating the abdication of my retail throne.

Most of the work was repetitive: fold leggings, watch customers rifle through a meticulously folded pile, refold. My job was as stimulating as the twenty shades of drab beige accoutrements that hung in the window. On May 19, I referred to my job as “mindnumbing labor” in a text to my mom.

With each subsequent shift, though, my attitude began to change. Time on the clock became meditative. A series of switches flipped — the first of which being the house music playlist curated by Corporate.

While stationed in the front of the store one shift, I began dancing on beat with the kick drum. I wasn’t in Tokyo, sure, but rhythm, I’m told, is international. My coworkers were on the same wavelength. We started to critique the track list over walkie-talkies: dissing the Diplo remix of “Your Love,” and applauding the addition of “Ooouuu” by Young M.A.

This fixed the constant boredom, and not in a solely superficial way, either. Musings on music turned into deeper conversations and a genuine curiosity. I started investing my full attention and interest in each interaction — a feeling that began to scratch that traveling itch.

Later that shift, I journeyed to another hemisphere of the store. While folding an uncooperative stack of biker shorts, I struck up a conversation with my coworker, Hisham. In the few minutes we spent together without a single customer in sight, we touched on disparate topics: international politics, Sweetgreen and the club scene in Boston.

Hisham told me about his immigration from Lebanon to the United States following the 2020 explosion in Beirut, his home city. We gabbed about his self-taught coding skills and our aspirations for the future. Little by little I found myself piecing together different parts of his story. The more I asked Hisham, the more attention I began to pay to others’ stories, too.

It struck me that I didn’t need to be jetset to participate in international conversations. I could find that same spirit at home — and get a paycheck, too.

As trite as it sounds, the more open-minded I became, the more each interaction turned into a lesson. Simply by going out of my way to talk to people who entered the store, I learned about a dozen different countries, sympathized with survivors of the Solid Core downstairs, and connected with people who I never would’ve crossed paths with otherwise.

Of course, you can’t mimic the feeling of satisfied wanderlust — like how a color-graded photo-dump of the Asian leg can’t capture the pounding bass of a Tokyo club. The moments in between the photos, though, the genuine human experiences and the humility that comes with learning from others, can’t be bought with a boarding pass.

To those whose legs weren’t jet-set this summer, an openness to learn is your passport. However you’ve spent your summer this year, renew it. Even if you’re stuck working retail.

Contact STEPHANIE ALTSCHUL stephanie.altschul@yale.edu

WKND Recommends “The Second Coming” by W. B. Yeats.

// BY STEPHANIE ALTSCHUL

//MADISON BUTCHKO

Down the holiday road

// BY ALEXANDER MEDEL

It is 4 a.m. The sun has barely risen, yet I stand at attention as I join the bucket brigade that is tossing my family’s food, luggage and ceremonial travel cooler into the trunk of my SUV. They are shoddily stacked, one on top of another, but neat enough to please a high school geometry teacher.

The driver climbs in, checking the mirrors for what is likely the 50th time. I climb shotgun, boasting my collection of AAA travel maps that I will never get to use. The others climb into the cabin, praying they fall asleep sometime after Barstow.

The image is all too familiar, all too American. It is the road trip in all its honest, chaotic glory.

This past summer, a day after returning from New Haven, I was on the road to offer my cousin and her family from the Philippines an intimate look at America. Still fresh from finals season, I found myself up one morning at 4 a.m., helping pack our SUV and mentally preparing for the drive across the Central Valley with my travel maps in tow and my first cup of coffee in hand. The next day, we set off from our hotel in Las Vegas with Arizona on our minds.

I never fail to feel a pang of déjà vu on Interstate 40. For one thing, my parents and I were on the same road the summer before as we began our journey across the Southwest. For another, it is just like any other interstate. Parts of it are bland and forgettable. Parts of it are beautiful and unforgettable. All of it, however, reminds me why I love road trips the way I do.

There is the scenery, from the small town charm of Seligman to the pine forests sur-

mediately came to mind because there were so many.

That vastness and incomparable wealth of journeys to choose from is notable about America. If we turned left, we would have hit the redwoods. If we turned right, we would have hit the desert. It felt so easy to just pack our bags and go. But with what little time we had, a decision needed to be made. After much reflection, we settled on the Grand Canyon. In other words, we turned right.

The second thing that hit me while preparing is that word: American. It lodged itself in my mind. After all, what makes a road trip uniquely American?

The offspring of Detroit and the Interstate Highway System, road trips are American as struggling to locate France on a map, wincing at the word “kilometer” or dreaming about white picket fences. Much like tract housing, a Big Mac with fries and Sunday Night Football, the road trip is a defining aspect of the American consciousness, and it has been for many generations.

Many recall with a nostalgic fondness the escapades of the Griswold family on the road to Walley World or the quite literal ride-ordie friendship between Thelma and Louise. Others look to the adventures of Kerouac and company or to the reflections of Steinbeck with his dear friend Charley. I look back at

freedom exists on the open road in a way no other medium can perfectly offer. Here the journey takes center stage; the destination is reduced to a MacGuffin.

Part of the beguiling quality of the open road is that you do not play victim to the whims of the Northeast Regional, nor are you constrained by the flight path of a Delta airliner. The road is yours to travel and explore as you wish. You can follow it, pursue a detour or forget it altogether and just drive. You can stay a little longer in a small town that captured your heart, or make an unintended stop to take a photo

rounding Williams. There is also the sense of community among fellow travelers.

Our destinations are different, but we all share the road — that ribbon of highway complete with all its bends, bumps, twists and turns. Shared also is a sense of adventure and appreciation for the land that is America and its beauty, communities and people.

All that said, there is nothing like being in the company of motorhomes, camper vans and long haul trucks — all fueled by Chevron gas and a sense of adventure — bound for Wichita, Louisville or any other destination that would suit my carsick imagination. And it just so happened that our destination on this day was one worthy of imagination.

The Grand Canyon is a classic road trip destination for multiple reasons: its proximity to Route 66, its lack of proximity to a major airport, its status as a national park. It is also very beautiful.

To call the Grand Canyon beautiful is like calling Organic Chemistry “hard” or traffic in Los Angeles “slow.” Any attempt to describe the Grand Canyon, even my own, barely scratches the surface of capturing, in all accuracy and totality, its grandeur. John Wesley Powell was right. “The wonders of the Grand Canyon cannot be adequately represented in symbols of speech, nor by speech itself.”

As I stood atop Mather Amphitheater, the canyon resting below me, there was a stillness. The wind silenced itself into reverence, pausing, much like me, to respect the view it was navigating. The clouds moved overhead with quiet embarrassment, hoping that their shadows did not darken the canyon’s hues of tangerine and caramel.

The horizon reached so far that had I squinted, I would have seen the face of God.

An aura of majesty wraps itself around the Grand Canyon, and I left it, as I did once many years ago, with awe, admiration and appreciation.

When I was planning the trip, two thoughts struck me. The first one was that I had no idea where to go. No destination im-

my childhood and some precious moments: watching my parents argue over whether they missed the exit for Bakersfield or sitting at a rest stop with a Dr. Pepper on one hand and weariness on the other.

It is important to note that the road trip, despite its prominence in American culture, is not exclusively American. All you need is a car, a route and genuine intent. So far as I am concerned, the variables to this equation can be found anywhere, whether it be stateside or through the Amalfi Coast, the Cape of Good Hope, the Patagonias or the Philippines itself.

To be sure, there are the small quirks that give American road trips a distinct American flavor in the same way apizza uniquely belongs to New Haven. There are outdated infrastructure, gas station sandwiches and family sing-alongs. Then there is the fair share of Love’s Travel Stops and Holiday Inns. The list goes on. But there is a dynamic that goes beyond these items, as nostalgic and humble as they are. It is simply the fact that the American road trip is the perfect manifestation of freedom and exploration. It is the American ethos made real. There is a reason why sights like a highway leading into a vast horizon, a coastal road flirtatiously caressing a cliffside or a mountain pass climbing to the stars excite me in a way that is all too alluring. Unbridled

and the complexities of life are lived and learned. Old questions are answered. New questions are asked.

Just as much as it is about seeing new places and making new friends, the American road trip allows you to develop a deeper connection to and a greater consciousness about the nation called America.

It is this sense of freedom and exploration that my relatives came searching for on this road trip, and they found it. The American road trip is certainly more than collecting national parks or racking up your state list, as admirable as those pursuits may be.

The American road trip is a lens with which

Just as much as freedom, exploration has always been part of our heritage as a nation.

of the World’s Largest Something. This is most certainly hard to do on a plane or train — the automobile is the only way. Just as much as freedom, exploration has always been part of our heritage as a nation. It is what led Lewis and Clark across the frontier, Bly around the world and Peary to the Arctic Circle. It was the spark that drew Armstrong and company to the Moon and Ballard into the depths of the ocean. It is what drives yours truly across America on his own adventures on asphalt.

A road trip has all the hallmarks of exploration. A story is made when it is smooth, and a saga is born when it is rough. And road trips, much like exploration, are a masterclass in saga creation. Comfort zones are deconstructed, new perspectives are developed

one may experience this country without dilution or filter, without facade or veneer, without accoutrements or impedimenta. Indeed, the greatest classroom to American life is the open road.

Everything, from destinations to headings, are yours alone on a road trip; you are the master of your fate in this environment. Where you stop and where you eat is an expression of your desires just as it is a reflection of your values and identity. Gone are the tethers to the beelines of life.

Self-expression, self-reliance and self-definition await all on the road, and if that sirenic call is not American, then I do not know what is.

Contact ALEXANDER MEDEL at alexander.medel@yale.edu .

PERSONAL ESSAY

The three stages of living abroad

// BY CLARISSA XIAO-YANG TAN

We’re all familiar with the five stages of grief. Moving to a new country has only three. As a temporary expat in Uzbekistan this past summer, I experienced the honeymoon phase, a period of frustration and, finally, adjustment.

I came across the opportunity to intern with Uzbekistan’s Ministry of Tourism when I was backpacking in Vietnam last summer. On my 13-hour night bus, I befriended a girl named Inna from Uzbekistan, who connected me with a business exchange project through the American Embassy.

Now, you may be wondering, “What is Uzbekistan?”

Let’s start with a bit of geography: Uzbekistan is a country in Central Asia, nestled between some of the world’s most storied regions — Russia, China, Afghanistan and Eastern Europe. For centuries, it was claimed and reclaimed by great empires like the Temurids, the Turks, the Mongols, the Chinese Tang Dynasty, Alexander the Great and eventually, the Soviet Union. Today, most Uzbeks speak Russian.

Uzbekistan is at the heart of the once bustling Silk Road, where centuries-old exchanges are still preserved. The country prefers to keep a low political profile, maintaining peace and guarding its independence from its highly-controversial neighbors.

Uzbekistan had been my dream destination for years. I had a love of Silk Road arts and architecture and a desire to explore a “hidden gem” far from the tourist trail. After meeting Inna and interviewing with both the American and Uzbek sides of the project, I decided to follow through with a far-off adventure.

I consider myself a seasoned traveler, but man, did I struggle when I first arrived. I anticipated Uzbekistan’s desert heat, the language barrier and the meat-and-bread-based diet. But none of these things had ever caused a problem for me before. I quickly realized why: when backpacking, my days are filled from morning to night with crazy tours, or time spent socializing with other foreigners in a hostel. Uzbekistan was the first time I stayed in a non-touristy place long enough to truly attempt integration into the local community.

1. Honeymoon Phase

My first days in Tashkent were exciting and full of wonder. Russian reverberates through the streets of the capital city. The metro stations are works of art. The cheap prices are to be envied by those who visit Paris and Rome. The colors and textures all felt like an Instagram photoshoot waiting to happen.

As Americans, it’s easy to write off a place like Uzbekistan, believing it to only be a desert. That couldn’t be further from the truth.

The mountains that trail across Zaamin are equally if not more beautiful than those of the Swiss Alps. The old tower minarets of Bukhara have seen more holy prayer than those of Dubai. The tall blue-tiled mosaic domes in Samarkand reflect light just as brightly as the blue roofs in Santorini. I had yet to see a single sand dune. The best part was that all of this domestic travel was “part of the job” — in other words, I got to appreciate the country for free!

At times, it felt like I was the only American in the entire city. I was definitely undergoing some type of main character syndrome, wandering through unfamiliar streets and sitting on park benches, completely in awe of the fact that I had dared to venture to Uzbekistan.

2. Frustration

Very quickly, that romanticism wore off. I started wishing there were more English speakers and wondering how my Chinese immigrant parents had ever managed to relocate to a new country.

Most of my weekdays were focused on basic survival skills: figuring out which metro exit to take, memorizing the names of absurdly-long bus stops that were sometimes in Uzbek but sometimes in Russian, Google-Translating menus, hunting for fruits and vege-

tables, whipping out my calculator app to to convert from UZS to USD, subtracting nine hours from my time zone to call loved ones and then subsequently staying up until 2 a.m. to do so.

Socialization was also hard. Americans tend to be outwardly friendly to strangers — they speak to you on the street, make small talk in elevators, compliment your outfits and tell you that you’re a queen who slays. Slavic social culture is far more reserved.

It took two weeks before I even felt remotely close with the girls at work and stopped feeling intimidated by them. In public spaces like taxis or grocery stores, I resorted to putting in my earbuds in order to avoid the embarrassment of repeating “ya ne znayu russki,” or “I don’t speak Russian,” which I painstakingly learned from Duolingo.

The hardest part wasn’t struggling to fit in — it was admitting to myself that this was hard. Maybe it was my ego or my confidence from years of travel, but I somehow believed I could live anywhere in the world and feel at home. False.

My frustration was disappointing. I really did want to love Tashkent. I wanted so badly to just show up and call it home. But home doesn’t come that easily. It takes time and effort, and more often than not, you might hate your new home for not being more like your old one before you learn to love it. I found myself constantly swinging between “I love Uzbekistan” and “I don’t know if I can see myself ever fitting in.”

3. Adjustment

As you might have guessed, I did eventually grow to love Tashkent. The beautiful thing after struggling to adjust to a country is to start to develop a routine.

Having memorized my public transport route from Buyuk Ipak Yo’li Station — “Great Silk Road,” how awesome does that sound?? — to Amir Temur Square, I was finally able to put down Yandex Maps. Slowly, I grew a Notes app list of my favorite cafes and corner restaurants. I frequented Tashkent Tavern every Wednesday for English Trivia Nights with former Fulbright teachers and British expats via Bus Number 26. I began greeting the doorman of my office tower with “Privyet” and “Spasibo.”

The first time Tashkent started to feel like home was when I left it. Midway through my internship, I took a weekend trip to Tajikistan to renew my visa. As much as I loved the mountain lakes and turquoise scenery, I couldn’t help but compare everything in Dushanbe to Tashkent. And when I returned to Uzbekistan just three days later, I felt an overwhelming wave of relief at the sight of familiar bus stops. The weekend after, my dad paid me a visit. Though I was still new to Tashkent myself, nothing makes you appreciate a place quite like seeing it through someone else’s fresh eyes.

As we traveled Uzbekistan together, I started noticing all the small things I’d picked up without realizing. I found myself explaining bits of history, cultural customs and even translating words or signs for him. I took him to my favorite bakery, where the cashier rang up my usual order without asking. In those moments, I realized that — even if I still felt like a foreigner most days — I had quietly grown into the rhythms of life.

By the second half of my internship, life in Tashkent started to feel like Yale. My GCal was full of meals, outings, and coffee with people I could finally call “friends.” There wasn’t a single day where I didn’t have something planned. My job was to travel. All this made summer feel like some kind of extended vacation.

When mid-July rolled around, I left with hugs, Telegram contacts, invitations to return, and well wishes from the girls who had once been strangers but were now friendly faces.

Contact CLARISSA XIAO-YANG TAN at clarissa.tan@yale.edu.

The first time Tashkent started to feel like home was when I left it.

PHOTOS BY CLARISSA XIAO-YANG TAN

THE RACE FOR WARD 1

Three Yalies are running to represent downtown New Haven on the Board of Alders. The Democratic primary will take place Sept. 9.

THE ELECTION

Primary election for Ward 1 Alder

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9

Who are the candidates?

Norah Laughter ’26

Rhea McTiernan Huge ’27

Elias Theodore ’27

What is Ward 1?

New Haven's Ward 1 is one of the city’s 30 districts. The ward encompasses all of Yale’s residential colleges except Pauli Murray, Benjamin Franklin, Morse, Ezra Stiles, Timothy Dwight and Silliman. The ward also includes Old Campus and half of the New Haven Green.

How do I register to vote?

Register in-person at New Haven City Hall, located at 165 Church St., or at the Registrar of Voters, located at 200 Orange St. Both buildings are open Monday-Friday between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Registration closes at noon on Monday, Sept. 8.

How can I vote early?

Early voting is available at New Haven City Hall until Sunday, Sept. 7. Early voters must register to vote before noon at least one business day before the day they vote.

How can I vote on primary day?

Head to the New Haven Free Public Library at 133 Elm St. on Tuesday, Sept. 9.

Laughter is new to New Haven. ‘Win or lose,’ she plans to stay

BY KADE GAJDUSEK STAFF REPORTER

It was just after lunchtime and the entourage surrounding Ward 1 alder candidate

Norah Laughter ’26 was scouting the College Street sidewalk for passersby to talk to.

Even when students kept moving, unfazed by the solicitations, Laughter’s friend Sadie Lee ’26 would match their pace to converse with them as they walked on.

“Sadie’s in the bathroom right now,” Laughter’s friend and campaign team member Tenzin Jorden ’25 said.

“She didn’t follow anyone in there, right?” Laughter asked in response.

Laughter and her competitors, Rhea McTiernan Huge ’27 and Elias Theodore ’27, are running to represent a district that encompasses Old Campus, eight of Yale’s residential colleges and half of the New Haven Green on the Board of Alders. Laughter, a Kentucky native, is the only senior and non-New Havener in the race, and as the primary approaches, she’s been juggling her political campaign, union organizing and life as a student.

On Sunday, Laughter and other members of her campaign spent four and a half hours manning a table next to Cross Campus. They intercepted hordes of first-year students headed toward Beinecke Plaza for Yale’s extracurricular fair and other wanderers from around campus.

One student asked about Laughter’s relatively late arrival to New Haven and whether, if elected, she would stick around to see her two-year term through.

“Whether or not I win or lose, I’m living in New Haven,” Laughter replied.

Throughout the day, the table’s engagement never waned. Laughter’s tabling team grew as the day progressed, exceeding 13 members at its peak.

While individual walkers were usually willing to talk, large groups tended to ignore the campaign team’s appeals.

“I’m running on this platform built by the workers for a fully funded city,” Laughter said. “We know that a fully funded city means that Yale pays its fair share, and when Yale pays its fair share, we get good union jobs, we get a!ordable housing and we get youth and educational opportunities.”

After setting up her table, Laughter walked across the Cross Campus green, soliciting picnic-goers and bench-sitters for a discussion, while Jorden manned the table.

Stepping away from her campaign table around twice an hour, Laughter committed herself to a question-heavy conversational approach. First, she’d ask a passerby if they were a registered voter in New Haven. If they said yes, she would launch into a series of questions about their experience living in the city, their view of Yale and what priorities they would like to see on a local politician’s agenda.

“It's hard sometimes,” Laughter said of the canvassing process. “But the running joke that we have is that I don't beat the extrovert allegations because after I do canvass, I feel so good.”

Laughter’s friend Naomi D’Arbell Bobadilla ’22 — a services assistant at the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library and a member of Local 34, Yale’s clerical and technical workers’ union — joined her on the rounds. D’Arbell Bobadilla said that years of door-knocking and canvassing made the confrontations a lot easier.

The people the pair approached were often hesitant to talk. But as the questioning progressed and prospective voters gave their answers, they tended to fall into a comfortable rhythm.

Even for non-voters or people registered elsewhere, the conversations stretched on. Laughter would ask about what they thought of the Yale-New Haven relationship, and whether they had engaged in local activists’ programming before.

As they advertised her campaign, Laughter and her team simultaneously advertised a rally planned for Sept. 25, which is being organized by New Haven Rising, a local activists group, and Students Unite Now, a student group Laughter leads that calls for increased financial aid and student wages.

The rally will urge contract renegotiations for two Yale unions, Locals 34 and 35. During Laughter’s conversations Sunday, her “union organizing and mending divide” spiel sometimes took precedence over her campaigning, which she often wouldn’t bring up immediately.

“It’s one thing to get people to register for a primary,” Laughter said. “It's another thing to sustain their engagement.”

While every candidate has identified the town-gown relationship as a priority in their campaigns, Laughter said she believes she’s the only candidate who has taken action in that area. If elected, she hopes to serve as the nexus between students, local government and “the coalition,” which includes her fellow organizers and activists.

Laughter also pointed to her endorsements from and shared platforms with Alders Frank Douglass and Jeanette Morrison, who represent Wards 2 and 22. She met both through local activism and union organizing.

All three alder candidates have repeatedly referenced Yale’s voluntary contribution to New Haven, which is set to expire next year, in their campaigns. Laughter stressed that Yale should not reduce its voluntary contribution to the city, regardless of federal circumstances, alluding to recent legislation that increased the tax on University’s endowment returns to 8 percent.

As Laughter’s outreach e!orts extended into the early afternoon, more than a few students walked by holding Theodore-supplied ice cream with “Elias for Ward 1” stickers pasted on their chests. This did not stop Laughter and her team from engaging them in conversation.

When approaching voters that plan to support another candidate, Laughter said, her first instinct is curiosity. Holding firm in her question-forward approach, she asks what the voter cares about and why they think the candidate they have selected is best to attend to those needs.

Laughter often finds that their rationale is a platonic commitment, she said. But when a voter cites political reasons, she tends to make a case for herself, relaying her history of activism. Early voting for the Democratic primary began Sept. 2.

Contact KADE GADJUSEK at kade.gadjusek@yale.edu.

BY ELIJAH HUREWITZ-RAVITCH STAFF REPORTER

For Rhea McTiernan Huge ’27, running to represent downtown New Haven on the Board of Alders has been “a test of how much you like yourself and how much you can withstand,” she said. Between McTiernan Huge and the Ward 1 alder seat are two other Yalie candidates, Norah Laughter ’26 and Elias Theodore ’27. Each hopes to represent a district that encompasses eight of Yale’s residential colleges and Old Campus, as well as half of the New Haven Green and roughly 85 businesses.

McTiernan Huge’s days often begin with a host of bureaucratic tasks to tick off. On Friday, she started her afternoon in a quiet, wood-paneled corner of the Davenport library firing o ! texts and emails. The legal pad sitting in front of her was filled with scribbled notes, such as “make apt building tabling schedule.”

“I have all these to-do lists in my phone, and they all get lost, so I have to write it all down,” McTiernan Huge said.

Next on McTiernan Huge’s agenda was filming an Instagram Reel to highlight her favorite places in the Elm City. First up was G Café on Chapel Street, where McTiernan Huge asked the barista for permission to film a clip inside. As of Tuesday evening, she had not yet posted this Reel to her campaign Instagram account.

“It’s so awkward,” she said, referring to Reel-making. For McTiernan Huge, being the center of attention is often stressful, though she explained that focusing her Reels less on her and more about the area she hopes to represent alleviates some of the pressure.

Though McTiernan Huge knew as soon as she filed to run for alder in mid-May that she would use social media to campaign, she said she has felt pressure to produce Reels because of her competitor Theodore’s prolific Instagram presence.

“I don’t think it’s possible to one-up him, Reels-wise,” she said. “I’ve accepted that I’m okay with it.” It took a week for McTiernan Huge to work up to making her first video, she said, though

THE CANDIDATES

McTiernan Huge finds Instagram Reels ‘awkward.’ She makes them anyway

the process of creating them has gotten easier since. Besides, she is confident that using Instagram will help her increase voter engagement.

“Social media is a really great way to reach a large variety of people that I’m not gonna be able to talk to one-on-one in the time that we have left before the election,” McTiernan Huge said. “And so I really want to make sure that my opinions are recorded in that way.”

Next on the Davenport junior’s list of favorite spots for her video was the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library — her favorite study spot — where she confirmed with a librarian that non-Yalies can use the reading room and check out books.

BY SABRINA THALER

STAFF REPORTER

Just after noon on Aug. 21, a crowd of dozens of first-year students and their Camp Yale counselors filed into Silliman College, where they were scheduled to have lunch. Elias Theodore ’27, expecting them, stood behind a table decorated with a neon campaign banner and equipped with voter registration forms.

“If anyone wants to register to vote in Connecticut, it takes three minutes!” he yelled toward the students.

Not missing a beat, a Camp Yale leader shouted in response, “Guys, vote for Elias for alder.” Another yelled, “Okay, Elias, period!”

Regardless, most of the first years ignored his request. After the group entered the dining hall, Theodore sat back down at his table and resolved that it would be easier to reach students in small groups on their way out of the dining hall. He then resumed sending a mass email to counselors for three different Camp Yale programs, using email lists he got from friends, encouraging them to share information about the Ward 1 alder race with their first-year campers.

Theodore is competing in a historic three-way primary to represent downtown New Haven on the Board of Alders alongside Rhea McTiernan Huge ’27 and Norah Laughter ’26. Ward 1 contains eight of the University’s 14 residential colleges, Old Campus, half of the New Haven Green and several downtown businesses.

Throughout his campaign, Theodore, who grew up in New Haven’s East Rock neighborhood, has leaned on fellow students for support. His friends gave him the email lists he used for mass messaging, and a coalition of supporters have helped him produce his Instagram Reels, design his website and coordinate outreach to various constituent groups.

That morning, after a meeting in Fair Haven with Ward 15 Alder Frank Redente Jr., Theodore drove downtown to complete a task that became ritual: dropping o! students’ voter registration forms with the Registrar of Voters. Theodore spent several minutes asking registrar o cials about election day procedures, registration deadlines and absentee voting.

Theodore’s friends have been key to his campaign. As he stopped to pick up a wagon of campaign materials from his suite in Jonathan Edwards College, he mentioned that all seven of his suitemates are engaged in his campaign, including two working as his treasurers.

Theodore also dipped into his network of fellow First-Year Outdoor Orientation Trips leaders to get the word out about his campaign, speaking to the full group of leaders on their first day of fall training and sending a campaign email to the entire group.

While on route from Jonathan Edwards to meet the first years eating lunch at Silliman, Theodore stopped at a bulletin board on Cross Campus to pin up one of the campaign posters stored in his wagon.

“Everything is working in tandem,” Theodore explained. “You have to put many e!orts out there into the world and hope that some of them work for somebody.”

Following Theodore’s midday stop at Silliman — which yielded just a few registrations — he met with Maya Quaranta ’29 for a lunchtime strategy meeting.

The pair glanced over a list of Ward 1 voters and phone numbers from years ago. Phone calling has been part of their strategy to reach non-Yalie Ward 1 voters, including people who live in downtown apartment buildings. Quaranta was also using Theodore’s campaign Instagram account to follow the people that signed Theodore’s petition to appear on the primary ballot and who registered to vote at his tables.

Quaranta, a first year from Orange, Conn., is working on Theodore’s social media campaign, which included an effort to follow members of the class of 2029 on Instagram. Quaranta lives in Timothy Dwight College, meaning she won’t be eligible to vote in the Ward 1 race, but she says she feels the election would a!ect all of Yale, which is why she wanted to get involved.

“You can tell he cares. To care so much about a city is a rare thing,” Quaranta said about Theodore. She volunteered to haul his wagon — stocked with a table, the posters and other campaign materials — on the way to begin the team’s next task: filming Instagram Reels.

“I want to make sure that all things I’m talking about are accessible to everyone,” McTiernan Huge said. Although she has spent much of her time campaigning trying to win over Yalies, she has also done voter outreach at various downtown apartment buildings, such as the Eli.

After a quick stop at the Shubert Theatre, where a young McTiernan Huge danced in “The Nutcracker” two years in a row — first as a reindeer, then as a cake decoration — she headed toward the New Haven Free Public Library. McTiernan Huge spent many hours there as a child, she said, after exhausting her school library’s offerings on Greek mythology.

At the library, McTiernan Huge took a tour of the “Tinker Lab,” a space full of design equipment like 3D printers and laser cutters. McTiernan Huge filmed a local vendor embroidering a piece of fabric and quickly decided that the library deserved a Reel all to itself.

“The Yale bubble is so pervasive,” McTiernan Huge said. “I’ve really enjoyed getting to explore New Haven again in a slightly different way.”

For McTiernan Huge, the public-facing nature of the campaign process “creates a di!erent relationship internally about the person you are and the way that you’re presenting yourself.”

The final stop on McTiernan Huge’s whirlwind tour of Ward 1 was Grey Matter Books. She filmed a quick clip of the overflowing shelves and took a moment to browse but explained, “I’m not allowed to buy any books because I have too many I haven’t read.”

Back at her suite, McTiernan Huge put down her phone and spent half an hour cutting out paper circles of her campaign logo to turn into buttons.

“These physical tasks are a nice cooldown from the more intellectual, writing-based things,” McTiernan Huge said.

When the campaign gets “crazy, emotionally,” McTiernan Huge turns to her suitemates, who are her best friends, she said, and her boyfriend, Devin Grooms-Lee ’27. And when the tasks at hand feel unmanageable, she sits down with her campaign manager Kyle Thomas Ramos ’26, who helps boil down the to-do lists, she said.

“I’m not always good at asking for help, and this is forcing me to get better at that,” McTiernan Huge said. “It’s made a lot of my relationships stronger.”

A moment later, Grooms-Lee arrived at McTiernan Huge’s suite to help her carry a table to Cross Campus, where she set up under the shade of a tree. Laughter, one of her competitors, was across the way at a Students Unite Now table surrounded by her union colleagues.

Jessica Le ’27 wandered by McTiernan Huge’s table and got a spiel on the basics of New Haven governance. Le plans to vote but is torn between Laughter and McTiernan Huge, she said.

Through it all, McTiernan Huge is trying to hold close to her own sense of self.

She recalled a recent conversation with Ward 9 Alder Caroline Tanbee Smith, who represents parts of East Rock and Fair Haven.

“She was like, ‘You just have to remember that behind your heart there’s a little glowing gold ball. And whatever happens, no one can touch your little glowing gold ball.’”

McTiernan Huge grew up in New Haven’s Wooster Square neighborhood.

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

On the campaign trail, Theodore keeps his friends close and followers closer

Theodore was the earliest candidate in the Ward 1 race to create an Instagram account, which has reached over 1,100 followers since it launched in July. His video content has answered fundamental questions about the race, such as what an alder is and what Ward 1 encompasses, but has not delved deeply into his policy goals.

Hoping to change that, that day, Theodore filmed a video explaining his goal to increase Yale’s voluntary contribution to New Haven. For this task, Theodore enlisted Vikram Dalal, a friend of Theodore’s younger brother, to hold the camera as he recorded segments across the New Haven Green and Old Campus. Dalal is a senior at

Wilbur Cross High School, Theodore’s alma mater.

In the midst of recording, Theodore stopped groups of students walking on Old Campus to ask them if they’d register to vote. He spent the rest of the day tabling there and in Saybrook College, successfully registering 14 new voters by the end of the day.

After walking home to have dinner with his family, Theodore spent the evening tallying registrations, reaching students who hadn’t completed their forms properly and planning for the next day of campaigning.

Theodore said that he had been having a hard time sleeping in, even after late nights of campaign

work. He faces a regular stream of self-critical thoughts, he said, wondering what he could have done differently on a given day: registered more voters, stayed outside tabling longer, done “more.” But he doesn’t let those doubts fester, leaning instead on the people around him, he said.

“I’m someone who gets really invested in things,” he said. “I have a hard time finding balance. But when I am stressed, I don’t hold it in.”

The News held a debate with all three candidates on Sept. 3 at the First and Summerfield United Methodist Church.

Contact SABRINA THALER at sabrina.thaler@yale.edu

Students who cannot vote in the Ward 1 alder race engage anyways

BY JAKE ROBBINS STAFF REPORTER

The Yalies running to represent downtown New Haven in the Board of Alders have caught the attention of classmates who aren’t eligible to vote for them.

Three undergraduate candidates, Norah Laughter ’26, Rhea McTiernan Huge ’27 and Elias Theodore ’27, have thrown their hats in the ring to represent Ward 1 on New Haven’s Board of Alders. Earlier this month, all three candidates successfully petitioned to appear on the ballot of the Democratic primary election, which will take place Sept. 9.

Six residential colleges, Benjamin Franklin, Morse, Pauli Murray, Silliman, Ezra Stiles and Timothy Dwight, are outside the bounds of Ward 1, the district in New Haven which most encompasses Yale and is typically represented by an undergraduate. Despite this, the three Yalies running for Ward 1 alder have courted students with social media campaigns and tabling events regardless of what college they call home.

Ward 1 encompasses eight of Yale’s 14 residential colleges and all of Old Campus, where most first-year undergraduates reside.

The district also includes about half of the New Haven Green. The other six colleges are in Ward 22, which is represented by Alder Jeanette Morrison and also encompasses the Dixwell neighborhood.

Morrison, who has represented Ward 22 for 14 years, said she has noticed heightened student engagement in this year’s Ward 1 alder race, which is unusually competitive. While she doesn’t believe the race has fundamentally changed levels of student engagement with New Haven, she said it has stimulated increased attention to local politics.

“I wouldn’t say there’s been a major shift in how students

engage,” Morrison said in a phone interview. “What I see is an onset of involvement: Students are becoming more aware that they have opportunities to participate in local politics, even if they are not directly voting in Ward 1.”

Campaigns like Laughter’s, which include both student and local volunteers, reflect the race’s ability to encourage student engagement with New Haven, Morrison said. Still, she said that the Ward 1 election has not significantly impacted levels of student engagement with Ward 22’s politics.

Morrison cultivates relationships with Yale students in her district by appointing student co-chairs to represent Ward 22 on the Democratic Town Committee and by holding meetings at the six residential colleges within her ward. She said this structure allows students to learn about local government and helps her build stronger connections between Yale and New Haven.

While many undergraduates’ needs — such as housing and dining — are met on campus, Morrison noted that graduate students and off-campus students tend to interact with her office more directly, particularly when navigating issues like landlord disputes or rental conditions.

Although Zach Pan ’27, a junior in Ezra Stiles College, cannot vote in the Ward 1 election, he said he has followed the race closely, spoken with several candidates and plans to attend campaign events. He said that seat carries weight beyond Ward 1 because of its role shaping Yale’s relationship to the city.

“Even though I live outside Ward 1, I believe the alder will have a pivotal role to play in ensuring the University properly funds New Haven,” Pan said. “That is what motivates a lot of my interest and participation in the electoral pro-

cess.”

Tajrian Khan ’27, a junior in Benjamin Franklin College, said he has been following the Ward 1 alder race closely despite not living in the ward or being able to vote in the election.

“I’ve read the YDN and New Haven Independent features on each candidate,” Khan wrote in a text message. “I’ve been seeing Elias’s campaign all over Instagram. I’ve also seen him speaking to voters in person all over Ward 1, as well as helping new voters register.”

Khan, who was born and raised in Dhaka, Bangladesh, said his experiences studying urban planning and volunteering in New Haven have deepened his understanding of the city’s politics and

made him more attentive to the race. Like Pan, he feels that municipal decisions made by the Board of Alders impact students across campus, regardless of where they live. While he does not plan to attend any in-person campaign events, he said he will continue following the candidates platforms closely.

Miriam Levenson ’29, a lifelong resident of the New Haven area and a student in Silliman, said she first learned about the Ward 1 alder race through social media, where she frequently saw campaign videos, especially from Theodore.

Though Levenson later learned that her Silliman address disqualifies her from voting in Ward 1, she said the visibility of the campaigns still motivated her to pay closer attention to local politics.

“I was planning to vote in the election, though I hadn’t decided on my candidate,” Levenson wrote in an email to the News. “I found out that I’m not going to be directly involved in the race, but I’m still excited to know what Yale students can be involved in the city I love, and that they want to be. Every

poster, table or video I see about the Ward 1 race reminds me to be involved in local politics.”

Levenson added that she views the Ward 1 alder role as an important bridge between Yale students and New Haveners, both practically and symbolically.

Citing issues like housing, transportation and Yale’s voluntary contributions to the city, Levenson emphasized that the alder’s influence extends beyond Ward 1 and a!ects the broader Yale community.

Although she did not know her alder’s name when asked by the News, Levenson said the race has pushed her to feel “more responsible” for learning about her ward’s representation and becoming informed about local government. She added that the contest has motivated her to consider deeper civic engagement, even expressing interest in running for a city position in the future. The Board of Alders meets at New Haven’s City Hall, located at 165 Church St.

Contact JAKE ROBBINS at jake.robbins@yale.edu