NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · THURSDAY, JANUARY 21, 2016 · VOL. CXXXVIII, NO. 67 · yaledailynews.com
INSIDE THE NEWS MORNING EVENING
CLOUDY CLEAR
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CROSS CAMPUS
FROM THE PULPIT NAACP PRESIDENT HONORS MLK
NUS VISITS US
NEW CHIEF IN TOWN
Number of Yale-NUS students abroad at Yale leaps to 24
NEW HAVEN FIRE DEPARTMENT GREETS NEW HEAD
PAGE 5 UNIVERSITY
PAGE 3 UNIVERSITY
PAGE 5 CITY
Alexion returns to College Street
#TBT high school. Fifteen hundred high school students from around the world will arrive on campus this afternoon for the first day of Yale’s 42nd Model United Nations conference. If you’re not a member of the YMUN team, all this means is that you’ll run into groups of nervous high schoolers in formal business attire at least three times today. Davocado toast. University President Peter Salovey is in Davos, Switzerland this week with several world leaders, including John Kerry ’66, for the 2016 World Economic Forum. Other participants include Bill Gates, Arianna Huffington and David Cameron. Calling all binge-watchers.
Netflix announced premiere dates for several of its shows, including “House of Cards” and “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” which are set to premiere on Feb. 26 and April 15, respectively. A few shows are scheduled to come out right around midterm season — the procrastinator’s dream. Welcome to the new age.
Sewall Chan, an international news editor in the London office of The New York Times, will sit down with Berkeley College Master Marvin Chun for a master’s tea titled “Covering the News in a Digital Age” at 4 p.m. Chan has reported on national events such as Hurricane Katrina and the 2005 transit strike for the Times.
Handstands for you.
Brooklyn-based pop music duo Chairlift, who gained fame with their 2008 hit “Bruises” — featured in an iPod Nano commercial —will play at 7:30 p.m. tonight at The Space in Hamden. The price of the Uber might be worth it to hear the song, which Village Voice Media called “nothing short of astounding.” Views from the waitlist. As
is typical of shopping period, campus is buzzing with sound of students grumbling about over-subscribed seminars. One such course is Ryan Wepler’s “Writing Humor.” The class has a 79-student waiting list. The News is rooting for each of you.
An apple a day. If you’re
looking for information on the best dining hall fruit options, follow @yalefruitreport on Twitter. The account tweets out updates on the good, bad and ugly of Yale dining’s fresh fruit. Also follow yalefoodblog on Instagram for pictures of the best eats at Yale and in New Haven.
THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY
1980 The University Budget Committee tells the athletic department to cut more than $270,000 from its budget. The cuts may force the department to consider eliminating individual sports, according to Athletics Director Frank Ryan. Follow along for the News’ latest.
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THE TEX FACTOR Texas guard Nick Victor ’16 shines after returning from injured season PAGE 12 SPORTS
Admins close review of Spanish Dept. BY VICTOR WANG STAFF REPORTER
Corporate Communications Emily Vlasek said. Community Foundation for Greater New Haven President Will Ginsberg, a New Haven resident for more than 30 years, including four working as the city’s economic development administrator, said he has never seen a company as profitable and global as Alexion choose New Haven as its base. Alexion’s public shares are worth roughly $36 billion. He added that Alexion’s move is
Administrators have instituted a range of changes in the Spanish and Portuguese Department — including appointing a new director of graduate studies, mandating sexual harassment training for faculty and temporarily banning recruitment of graduate students — following a review of long-standing allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse of power against senior faculty. But the measures have been criticized by some professors and graduate students as failing to address deeper-rooted issues within the department. In March 2015, an anonymous group of Spanish and Portuguese graduate students wrote a letter criticizing a “highly negative atmosphere” within the department. In particular, the letter denounced an environment of fear and intimidation and alleged that the director of graduate studies, Noël Valis, and the department chair, Rolena Adorno, did not take students’ concerns seriously. It also contained allegations of sexual harassment against Spanish professor Roberto González Echevarría GRD ’70. The letter was circulated among students and professors in the department as well as to administrators. In response, administrators announced a broad review of the department led by Jamaal Thomas from Yale’s Office of Equal Opportunity Programs and Barbara Goren, an independent consultant. The review took approximately six months and consisted of interviews with over 60
SEE ALEXION PAGE 4
SEE SPANISH DEPT. PAGE 6
COURTESY OF ALEXION
Alexion will be returning to College Street this March. BY PADDY GAVIN AND JIAHUI HU STAFF REPORTERS Two hundred Alexion employees returned to New Haven Tuesday after the company’s 16-year stint in nearby Cheshire, Connecticut. These 200 were the first of the 1,000 employees Alexion plans to move to its 100 College St. headquarters by the end of March. Alexion, a pharmaceutical company founded in Science Park in 1992 that specializes in the treatment of rare disorders, moved to Cheshire in 2000 after
struggling to find lab space in New Haven. But in 2012, the company announced that it would move back to the Elm City, bringing its resources closer to New Haven’s critical mass of scientists, biotech and collaborative research opportunities. “As Alexion works to fulfill its mission to transform the lives of patients with severe and devastating rare disorders, the move to New Haven enables us to keep pace with the rapid growth of the company’s global operations and expanding pipeline initiatives,” Alexion Associate Director of
Controversy surrounds BOE membership BY NOAH DAPONTE-SMITH AND REBECCA KARABUS STAFF REPORTERS When voters approved a set of revisions to the New Haven City Charter in November 2013, they thought it would lead to a Board of Education with the standard seven voting members beginning this year. Instead, it resulted
in eight. The accidental increase comes as result of a counting blunder in which the city failed to account fully for the addition of two elected members to the board. As a result, the board currently contains one more appointed member than allowed for by the city charter. Because none of the five appointed board members’
Admissions to focus on character BY JON VICTOR STAFF REPORTER In response to a Harvard Graduate School of Education report centered around reforming the college admissions process, Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Jeremiah Quinlan announced Wednesday that Yale would be making changes to next year’s application to emphasize ethical conduct and authentic academic and extracurricular engagement over laundry lists of achievements. The report, titled “Turning the Tide,” was released Wednesday morning at a panel in New York City and focused on three main concerns: emphasizing authentic civic engagement over personal achievement, reducing undue pressure on students and increasing college opportunity for students from all socioeconomic backgrounds. The main focus of the report is to inspire concern for others and the common good through college admissions. To that end, Quinlan announced that the University would add a question to the Yale application asking students to “reflect on engagement with and contribution to their fam-
ily, community and/or the public good,” and would also advocate for more flexibility in the Common and Coalition Applications so that schools can customize how students discuss extracurricular activities in their applications. The report comes amid widespread concern across the nation about the accessibility of higher education and the emotional toll the college application process can take on students. “With lots of information and uncertain outcomes in front of them,” Quinlan said at the panel, “students and parents default to emphasizing the quantifiable: individual achievement in academics, athletics and extracurricular activities … Meanwhile, on our campuses, colleges are actually looking for something else. Yes, we want students who have achieved in and out of the classroom, but we are also looking for things that are harder to quantify: authentic intellectual engagement, a concern for others and the common good.” The report was endorsed by more than 80 college admissions stakeholders, such as admissions officers, professors and SEE ADMISSIONS PAGE 4
terms end until the end of 2016, the board voted in on Dec. 14 to allow an eight-member body — consisting of two elected members, five appointed members and Mayor Toni Harp — to sit throughout 2016. But the Board of Alders had other ideas. Claiming that an eight-person board was illegal under the revised charter, the
alders voted on Dec. 21 to end appointed member Daisy Gonzalez’s term on Dec. 31, 2015, three years before her term was due to expire. The board targeted Gonzalez because she was the most recent member confirmed by the Board of Alders. The eight-member board is intended to last until the end of 2016, when Harp will appoint only one new member
to replace two members whose terms are due to expire. But due to a disagreement with the Board of Alders, the decision to allow an eight-member board might not last. While the BOE claims that it has the final say in deciding the number of sitting members, the alders maintain that their body SEE BOE PAGE 6
“Night Café” lawsuit filed
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Currently on display in the YUAG’s European Art wing, The Night Café arrived at the gallery in 1961. BY DAVID SHIMER STAFF REPORTER T h e Un i te d S ta te s Supreme Court has been asked to decide whether Yale is the rightful owner of The Night Café, a Vincent Van Gogh masterpiece valued at $200 million, currently owned by the Uni-
versity and the subject of a prolonged legal battle. On Jan. 15, lawyers representing Pierre Konowaloff — who argues that he is the rightful owner of the painting — filed his case with the Supreme Court. The filing states that the Supreme Court should hear the case for several reasons, includ-
ing that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which denied Konowaloff’s appeal in October 2015, ignored key legal precedent, and that the primary doctrine on which the defense has relied is inapplicable in this instance. SEE VAN GOGH PAGE 6