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A Warmer Welcome for Foreign Students
November 1999
President Levin last year announced his intention to increase the number of international students at Yale. Now, by revamping the office that deals with these students' concerns, the University hopes to make their time in New Haven easier and more fulfilling. The Office of International Education, which once dealt exclusively with passport, visa, and immigration issues, has been replaced by a new Office of International Students and Scholars.
Director Ann Kuhlman, who comes to the position after 22 years at University of Pennsylvania’s Office of International Programs, says she wants to continue to take care of practical matters quickly and easily. But she also recognizes that, with her appointment, “Yale is looking for someone who can take the existing office and enhance it.” In the future, she hopes to implement streamlined assistance with chores such as obtaining a driver’s license and finding housing. She also plans to launch a special orientation for international students and a new Web site, which is being developed by new associate director Gang Wang.
Kuhlman’s appointment coincides with that of Catherine Eaton Hutchison as director of the newly created Office of International Education and Fellowship Programs, which deals with the concerns of Yale students abroad. “It’s exciting that the Provost and the President see the new [international] mission as important,” says Kuhlman.
Tobacco Ban Sparks Student Ire
If you ever find yourself craving a pack of smokes while on the Yale campus, you may have to look a bit harder in the future to find it. University Properties, which operates the retail space owned by the University, is now routinely including a ban on selling tobacco products in shopkeepers' leases. The ban came to public attention in September when DeSisto Food and Grocery on Wall Street (formerly Wall Food Store) stopped selling cigarettes in accordance with its new lease.
“We don’t want to be in a position of encouraging or condoning a practice that is demonstrably harmful to people,” explains University spokesman Lawrence Haas.
But critics were quick to note that Yale has declined to divest itself of some $17 million in tobacco stocks in its endowment portfolio. In an editorial, the Yale Daily News accused President Levin of hypocrisy, saying the policy is “punishing small businesses while the University profits.” Haas says the University does not see a contradiction in the two policies.
Fraud Charge in Town-Gown Race
Where, legally speaking, do Yale undergraduates live when they are on campus? The answer may seem obvious, but a Yale undergraduate won a primary election for the New Haven Board of Aldermen by employing a novel interpretation of residency laws. Asit Gosar '00 defeated four-term incumbent Esther Armmand in the September 14 democratic primary for the alderman’s seat in Ward 7 by a 29-vote margin, but he later withdrew from the race when it was alleged that as many as 33 students had voted in the wrong ward.
Gosar and his supporters—including his roommate, Yale Daily News editor-in-chief Isaiah Wilner '00—advised freshmen and off-campus students who were affiliated with Pierson and Davenport Colleges to list those colleges as their home addresses when registering to vote. Pierson and Davenport are the only Yale residences in Ward 7; the Old Campus, where 20 of the 33 voters in question reside, is in Ward 1.
Gosar, who is majoring in ethics, politics, and economics, says he researched residency requirements and believed it was legal for Old Campus and off-campus students to register in their residential colleges. But Connecticut’s director of elections, Thomas Ferguson, and a host of local officials maintained that “residence is determined by where you lay your head at night.” Gosar framed the issue as one of student voting rights, explaining that having to register each time they move is a disincentive to student voting.
In the face of Armmand’s threat to sue, Gosar withdrew from the race, giving Armmand the nomination and a likely victory in the general election. But Gosar insisted he had done nothing wrong. “I believe the students in question have the right to vote in the Ward 7 election,” he said. “However, I believe going to court to defend those rights would be counterproductive.” At the press conference called to announce Gosar’s withdrawal, Mayor John DeStefano Jr. said he would appoint an ad hoc committee to clarify residency rules for students at New Haven colleges.
Guides for Less Traveled Paths
You’re all familiar with the Blue Book—formally known as Yale College Programs of Study. But how about the Pink Book and the Green Book? The two new hues are among recent efforts by campus groups to raise awareness of related course offerings in different departments and schools at the University.
The Fund for Lesbian and Gay Studies has published its “Pink Book,” which lists courses on themes relating to gender and sexuality, since 1993. It has more recently been joined by the Yale Student Environmental Coalition’s “Green Book” (courses related to the environment) and the Yale Hunger and Homelessness Action Project’s “Urban Studies at Yale.” The Institution for Social and Policy Studies just this year introduced “Bioethics at Yale,” a guide to faculty, research, and courses in the emerging field.
The guides' creators see them as a way to build interest in fields that don’t have a departmental foothold at Yale. “One of our strongest commitments is to better environmental education at Yale,” says Rachel Rusch '00 of YSEC. “If people take these courses and have an interest in more advanced courses, we can build momentum. Ultimately, we would like the Studies in the Environment program to become a freestanding major.”
In the case of the Pink Book, the strategy may be working. The women’s and gender studies program introduced a concentration in lesbian and gay studies last year.
Religion Goes Back to Class
When you put the words “religion” and “public schools” together, be prepared for sparks to fly. But Yale religious studies professors Jon Butler and Harry Stout are up to the task: The two are editing a 17-volume series of books for secondary schools on the history of religion in America.
Stout says he and Butler were moved to assemble the series, which is being published by Oxford University Press, because of schools' reluctance to discuss religion at all. “We both share the conviction that a knowledge of religion and its role in American society is essential to any responsible understanding of what it means to be an American,” says Stout. “The whole business of separation of church and state has been taken to ridiculous extremes whereby the mere mention of religion fills teachers with dread.”
The series, which is envisioned as a classroom resource for papers and reports, features several volumes on various religious groups—including Catholics, Muslims, Protestants, Jews, Mormons, Orthodox Christians, Native Americans and African Americans—and others on topics such as church and state or women and religion. Each of the books is written by an expert on the topic, and Stout says no proselytizing is permitted. “All the authors approach their subject as scholars,” he says, “not practitioners.”
“Before our series there was no neutral treatment of the religious groups and movements that make up the American mosaic,” says Stout. “Now, teachers can say, ‘you need to know about these groups, and here is the place to start.’”
Finally, Writers Can Concentrate
For all the emphasis Yale historically has placed on the importance of writing as a tool of scholarship and communication, writing for its own sake has sometimes been given short shrift. But the English department hopes to encourage budding novelists, essayists, playwrights, and poets through a new initiative that lets its majors “concentrate” in writing.
The six to 12 students who are accepted into the new Writing Concentration are required to take four writing courses and produce a senior project in addition to the senior essay or seminar already required for the major. Director of undergraduate studies Langdon Hammer says the new concentration will make it possible for more students to do tutorials in writing, and that the quality of those tutorials will be raised. The students in the concentration will meet as a group to share their work.
While no new courses are being offered to serve the concentration, Hammer says the department’s writing courses already have been expanded in recent years. “We have added new sections of our fiction and poetry writing courses, and we now offer screenwriting and playwriting, too, in addition to Daily Themes and our non-fiction courses,” says Hammer.
A Reborn Co-op, A Busier Broadway
While the University was busy announcing new developments in the Broadway retail district early this fall, the district’s most famous ex-tenant was unveiling an extensive makeover in order to compete with Broadway bookselling giant Barnes & Noble. The Yale Co-op, which occupied the site at 77 Broadway until the University replaced it with the national chain in 1997, underwent a $2-million renovation of its Chapel Square mall store over the summer.
Backed by Wallace’s Bookstores, a Kentucky-based college store chain with which it signed a ten-year management contract last year, the new Co-op is designed to accommodate changing seasonal demands, according to Wallace’s vice president, Tim Prather. The store features a bank of computers for Internet browsing and will soon house a café overlooking the Green. Prather says the Co-op did “at least twice as well” as last year in getting textbook orders from faculty.
Meanwhile, the Broadway redevelopment being overseen by University Properties (see “Barnes and Noble and Mom and Pop,” Feb.) got a boost in September with the announcement that the clothing retailer Urban Outfitters will be one of the tenants in a new building replacing several Broadway storefronts. Another new tenant, a locally owned Chinese café called the Ivy Noodle, will open on the site of the former Daily Caffe. “We’re creating a place that will attract a wide variety of shoppers to support the merchants when students are not on campus, and that will be lively night and day,” said Bruce Alexander, vice president for New Haven and state affairs.
Learning How Cocaine Takes Hold
While no drug habit is easy to kick, overcoming addiction to cocaine is particularly difficult. But research by Eric Nestler, the Elizabeth Mears and House Jameson Professor of Psychiatry and Pharmacology, and his colleagues, offers an explanation for the intransigence.
In the September 16 edition of the journal Nature, Nestler described a key component of cocaine addiction: the production by the brain of a protein called delta-FosB in response to the drug. The protein is “almost like a molecular switch,” says the scientist. “Once it’s flipped on, it stays on, and it doesn’t go away easily.”
In the three-year study, Nestler and a team of researchers from the Medical School, Harvard, and Northwestern worked with genetically engineered mice as proxies for human addicts. The scientists found that, sooner or later, cocaine caused delta-FosB levels to rise dramatically in an area of the brain known to play a role in addiction and in the perception of pleasure. The sharp increase then triggered a cascade of other changes in the brain that made nerve cells more sensitive to the drug.
“With this new research, we are beginning to understand exactly what the switch is and how it works,” says Alan I. Leshner, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. “This should help us develop medications to turn the switch off.”
Campus Clips
The University’s endowment, for those of you who are keeping track, is now worth $7.2 billion, according to figures released recently by the Investment Office. Last year’s return on investments was 12.2 percent, lower than in the previous four years but higher than most universities. Since 1989, the Investment Office has overseen investments with an average annual return of 15 percent, two points higher than the median rate for similar institutions.
If you’ve always thought the old campus was beautiful,you may now rest assured it’s not just chauvinism. The American Society of Landscape Architects has placed the quad on its list of the 362 most beautifully landscaped spots in the country, along with 21 other campus sites. The designation follows a massive 1998 redesign carried out by the Olin Partnership of Philadelphia, which relocated several of the old pathways to allow students to “get to where they want to go.”
Researchers at the Yale Sports Medicine Centerhave determined that women athletes are more likely to suffer knee injuries—and may take longer to heal—than men. Dr. Peter Jokl, director of the Center, says women’s bone and muscle structures may be a factor.
A national fraternity that was founded at Yale in 1845 hopes to return to campus.Alpha Sigma Phi, which built the building now occupied by the Yale Cabaret, became inactive in 1945 due to financial problems. But national leaders say the environment at Yale now is conducive to their return; they hope to establish a tentative “colony” by December.
The quality of day care that children receive can affect their progress in school,according to a study of 400 children conducted at Yale and three other universities. The study followed children through second grade; those who had been in high-quality child care programs scored higher in tests of academic and social skills than those in programs of lower quality.
Sporting
Life
A Coach’s Double Life on the Links
by Mark Alden Branch ’86
It was a ritual for the women’s golf team early this fall. When playing a tournament, the five players on the traveling team passed the phone around their hotel room for an evening check-in with coach Heather Daly-Donofrio '91. They reported the ups and downs of the day, and Daly-Donofrio responded with news of her own. For the coach was in another city, playing on the LPGA women’s professional golf tour.
The arrangement is a consequence of Daly-Donofrio’s quest to play and coach at the same time, an unusual feat that requires some juggling and accommodation for all involved. Because Daly-Donofrio is a “conditional” player on the tour this year, she can only enter tournaments when more established players opt out. When an opportunity comes, she seizes it, even if it conflicts with a tournament. So far this year, though, things have worked well in both arenas. Daly-Donofrio is currently ranked 98th on the tour and has winnings totaling $74,446. And the team has won its first three tournaments, including a one-stroke victory over Princeton at the Dartmouth Invitational in September.
Part of the credit for the team’s success in the coach’s absence goes to assistant coach Glenn Richetelle, who was hired this year to fill in when Daly-Donofrio is away. “Most of us were not really thrilled to learn Heather would be gone for our first three tournaments,” says captain Emily Johnson '00. “But we’ve all completely clicked with Glenn.”
The strong start for this year’s team, whose top three players are sophomores, raises hopes that Yale can reclaim the Ivy League title from Princeton this spring. They won the league tourney in 1997 and in 1998, Daly-Donofrio’s first year, but placed second last year.
And if their coach does well on the tour, life for her and the team could become less hectic. Daly-Donofrio is close to cracking the top 90 touring professionals, which would make her an “exempt” player—allowing her to choose tournaments so as not to conflict with her coaching schedule. Since Richetelle was hired, the coach is less anxious about her team while playing. “I’m starting to feel more comfortable on the road, so I hope I’ll play better,” she says.
And Daly-Donofrio’s players are eager to see more of her. “One of the best things about her is that she’s very much in that competitive mode,” says Johnson, “so she can relate to what we’re feeling when we’re out there.”
Sports Shorts
After opening with a 25–24 loss to Brown, the football team won three straight games against Valparaiso, San Diego, and Holy Cross. The first two wins came without starting quarterback Joe Walland '00, who left the Valpariaso game with a shoulder injury.
The men’s soccer team has won six of its first eight games this fall, including a 3–0 September victory over Harvard. The Bulldogs were ranked 16th in the nation before losing 3–2 to Dartmouth on October 9. Their only other loss was to nationally ranked Connecticut.
Twins Laura and Kate O'Neill '03 have emerged from a strong pack of freshman Eli runnersto lead the women’s cross-country team. The sisters from Milton, Massachusetts, were Yale’s top finishers in meets this fall in Boston and Bloomington, Indiana.  |
