NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2016 · VOL. CXXXVIII, NO. 93 · yaledailynews.com
INSIDE THE NEWS MORNING EVENING
SUNNY CLEAR
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CROSS CAMPUS
SWIPE LEFT TINDER USE AT YALE AND BEYOND
BOE-RN TO RUN
HUMANITIE$
Seven students campaign for student seats on Board of Ed
PROGRAM RECEIVES FUNDING FOR NEW INITIATIVES
PAGE B3 WKND
PAGE 3 CITY
PAGE 3 UNIVERSITY
ANALYSIS: mixed student engagement
Clinton in the Constitution State. Hillary Clinton’s LAW
’73 campaign announced that the presidential candidate will make a stop in Connecticut on March 18. The event will charge $2,700 per head, and there will be a VIP reception for those who donate more than $10,000. Clinton’s event will be co-organized by prominent Democratic Sens. Richard Blumenthal LAW ’73 and Chris Murphy and Rep. Elizabeth Esty LAW ’85.
She didn’t mean it, really.
Meryl Streep DRA ’75 wrote an op-ed in The Huffington Post yesterday to set the record straight after the Berlin International Film Festival. At the festival, Streep — the leader of the jury — said, “We’re all Africans, really,” in defense of the all-white jury. “I was not minimizing difference, but emphasizing the invisible connection empathy enables,” Streep wrote in her column.
Caps and gowns is not the
name of a secret society, but what graduating seniors at Cornell will be wearing as they hear James Franco GRD ’16 (Is he ever graduating himself?) — their 2016 Convocation speaker — deliver remarks. Franco was confirmed as Cornell’s speaker earlier this week. “[We] are confident that his address will be powerful and enlightening,” Cornell senior and Convocation Chair Zachary Benfanti said.
What’s your name, crayon?
The Purple Crayon of Yale — the University’s oldest longform improv troupe — takes a hint from the hit, Grammy Award-winning musical “Hamilton” and presents “Hamilcrayon.” At the show, the troupe will perform a fully improvised musical. The performance is tonight at 8 p.m. in Sudler Hall.
Tell it like it is. Telltale, a
student storytelling group at Yale, will host its third event of the year at the Morse-Stiles Crescent Theatre at 9 p.m. tonight. The group was formed by Sophie Haigney ’17, Alex Simon ’17 and Devon Geyelin ’16 to create a community around storytelling on campus.
THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY
1988 University President Benno Schmidt Jr. announces that he opposes a student proposal to add four LGBT freshman counselors to serve the freshman class in a “floating” capacity. Schmidt says he believes that the existing resources at Yale are sufficient.
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Amnesty International head explains response to current events PAGE 5 UNIVERSITY
Legislators weigh affirmative consent BY NOAH DAPONTE-SMITH STAFF REPORTER
dents who are really interested,” said Martha Highsmith, senior advisor to the president and a member of the Schwarzman Center Advisory Committee. Last weekend, the University presented students with yet another chance to share their thoughts on the Schwarzman Center, offering a new incentive: cash. During the Thinkathon event, teams of undergraduates and graduate and professional school students offered
After failing to pass the General Assembly in the 2015 session, legislation to mandate an “affirmative consent” standard at the state’s public and private universities is back for a second round in Hartford. Introduced by state Sen. Mae Flexer, D-Killingly, and state Rep. Gregg Haddad, D-Mansfield, affirmative consent legislation passed the Senate by an overwhelming 35–1 vote in the 2015 legislative session. But the bill died after not being put up for vote in the House of Representatives before the session ended. Flexer and Haddad have come together again for the 2016 short session to reintroduce the legislation, which would establish a “yes means yes” standard for sexual consent at colleges, in the hopes of getting it to Gov. Dannel Malloy’s desk before the session closes in May. Advocates for affirmative consent say the bill’s passage would go a long way toward combating rape on college campuses and provide clarity for university disciplinary boards adjudicating sexual assault cases. “We need these conversations in order to create more understanding and higher expectations for our students,” Flexer said in a press release earlier this month. “The scourge of campus rape is not going to go away by itself; we need to be proactive, and we need to change the debate from ‘No means no’ to ‘Silence doesn’t
SEE ANALYSIS PAGE 6
SEE CONSENT PAGE 4
In it to win it. Despite
comments made by one of Ben Carson’s ’73 top advisers that he will leave the race on March 2 if Super Tuesday does not go well, the Republican presidential candidate said he would stay in the running. “What’s relevant is what direction are you going in. How much support do you have and what are you trying to accomplish,” Carson told CNN yesterday.
MS. WORLDWIDE
DENIZ SAIP/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Students were offered cash prizes at the Thinkathon. BY DAVID SHIMER AND MONICA WANG STAFF REPORTERS In planning the development of the Schwarzman Center, the University has presented students with many opportunities to involve themselves in the process. But while some students have become intimately involved, it appears that the student body as a whole remains disengaged. Set to open in 2020, the center — made possible by a $150 million gift from Blackstone Group founder Stephen Schwarzman ’69 — will trans-
form Commons into a Universitywide student center. University administrators and members of the Schwarzman Center Advisory Committee have said the need for student input in the planning process is key. As a result, students have been presented with many ways to get involved, including thorough listening tours conducted last semester and a Thinkathon that took place on Feb. 20. Nevertheless, few students seem to be actively engaged in the center’s development. “It is a self-selected group of stu-
Harvard grad students back union effort BY VICTOR WANG AND DAVID YAFFE-BELLANY STAFF REPORTERS The leaders of a graduate student unionization effort at Harvard announced yesterday that a majority of students in the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences have signed on in support of a student union, just months after Yale’s own Graduate Employees and Students Organization claimed it had reached two-thirds support among graduate students. But questions linger over whether increasing support for the two unions will result in any real change. The announcement by the Harvard Graduate Students Union-United Auto Workers merely underlines the central challenge faced by graduate student unionization movements across the country: winning over administrators who are reluctant to accept the legitimacy of a graduate student union even as these movements gain momentum
nationwide. Current National Labor Relations Board regulations on student unions affirm universities’ hard-line stance that graduate students are students rather than employees, although two cases currently pending before the board could change that precedent. The NLRB stipulates that 30 percent of employees must sign authorization cards before an election for or against unionization can be held. But although GESO and HGSU-UAW claim to have far surpassed this threshold of graduate student support, they are not permitted to hold an official union election, under the precedent set by a 2004 case in which the NLRB ruled that graduate students at Brown University did not meet the legal definition of employees. Still, despite this ruling, Yale has the option to voluntarily recognize a graduate student union. GESO Chair Aaron Greenberg GRD
55 receive meningitis vaccine BY PADDY GAVIN STAFF REPORTER A week after the diagnosis of a Silliman freshman with the rare serogroup B variety of bacterial meningitis, Yale Health has vaccinated approximately 55 members of the Yale community against the strain, according to Director of Yale Health Paul Genecin. No new cases of meningitis have since been reported, and the infected student has been discharged from Yale-New Haven Hospital after receiving treatment, according to the New Haven Health Department.
Genecin announced the availability of the vaccine last Wednesday in a community-wide email. In his message, Genecin also confirmed that the affected student had been diagnosed with the serogroup B strain — a type of meningitis not protected against by the meningitis vaccination required of all Yale students. Known as Bexsero, the vaccine requires two immunizations at least a month apart and is approved by the Food and Drug Administration only for people 25 years of age and younger. It is currently available SEE MENINGITIS PAGE 4
SEE UNION PAGE 4
COURTESY OF THE HARVARD CRIMSON
Students at Harvard’s Graduate Student Council voted in support of a unionization effort.
$14.5 million given for Q House renovation BY JIAHUI HU STAFF REPORTER The Board of Alders last week accepted a $14.5 million grant from Gov. Dannel Malloy that kick-starts reconstruction of the Q House, a Dixwell community center that closed in 2003 after 79 years. The grant, which the state bond commission approved in January, covers most of the building costs for the new Q House — a 46,135 square-foot facility that will provide amenities for the general public, including a fitness center, gymnasium, computer lab and child care. Following the grant’s aldermanic approval, demolition of the old building and construction of the new building will begin this spring, Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison said. She added that the new Q House, which will rent some of its space to a library, health clinic and senior center to partly offset
its cost of operation, will open its doors to the Dixwell community within the next two years. “Even though the state in itself is going through different financial challenges, Malloy still found a way to make sure that he provided us with the resources to build something that I consider a pillar of hope and safe haven in the community,” Morrison said. The original Q House, which is located on 127 Dixwell Ave., has been unoccupied since it closed its doors more than a decade ago due to a lack of funds. Morrison took on the rebuilding of the Q House after she first assumed office in 2011, she said. After an initial two-year planning period, Morrison and other Q House proponents submitted requests to the state for $15.5 million to enable its reconstruction. Malloy granted the Q House $1 million in 2014 to complete designs for the facility. In 2015, the city also allocated $800,000
of its own funds for the demolition of the old building. “In 2015, we submitted all of the sketches and all of the specifics and the cost of the stuff that we wanted to do back to the state,” Morrison said. “We had to show the state that this was really real.” In the decades before the Q House closed, the establishment welcomed tens of thousands of residents of Dixwell, a neighborhood with one of the highest rates of poverty in the city. Supporters of the Q House’s reconstruction argued that rates of youth violence increased after the center closed because it had provided a recreational space for young adults who would otherwise be targets of gang recruitment. Dwight Alder Frank Douglas, who grew up in Dixwell, said his own experience in the Q House SEE Q HOUSE PAGE 6