ANOTHER KIND OF SCHOLARSHIP

On Dec. 26 of last year, Duke defeated Indiana in the Pinstripe Bowl, one of 41 bowl games that comprise the Football Bowl Subdivision postseason. According to ESPN, nearly 4 million people tuned in to watch the game, a 44–41 overtime victory for the Blue Devils.

Football players in the Ivy League, meanwhile, were four weeks out of season, as Ancient Eight football programs do not participate in any postseason.

That is one of two main factors that ostensibly put the conference at a disadvantage when it comes to recruiting top talent. The other is a ban on athletic scholarships, an attribute that has kept the Ivy League unique in NCAA Division I since the league’s formal establishment in 1954.

Still, the conference’s ability to offer generous financial aid packages can keep Ivy teams in competition with schools that boast higher-profile football programs.

“We’re recruiting scholarship guys, guys who were offered scholarships at other schools,” Yale football head coach Tony Reno said. “We’re going to play the best we can play.”

A member of the Atlantic Coast Conference, one of the so-called “Power Five” conferences, yet also a well-regarded academic institution, Duke occupies a niche similar to Yale. Yet while the two institutions offer comparable educations, Duke is bound by neither the Ivy League’s high academic standards nor its prohibition on athletic scholarships.

Though Yale’s need-based financial aid is among the best in the world, Duke’s ability to offer athletic scholarships ultimately swayed Morgenstern. Morgenstern said Duke created a scholarship package that was more tempting, and given the two schools’ similarly rigorous academics, he did not feel like he was sacrificing any part of his education for his sport. According to Morgenstern, the difference between attending Duke or Yale was between $40,000 and $50,000 over four years.

“That’s a lot, and you’re getting a similar education at a school like Duke,” he pointed out. “Duke’s a great school so that definitely fit the profile.”

Similar to Yale, Duke meets 100 percent of need based on estimated family contribution, per its financial aid website. Yet per NCAA regulations for FBS schools, the Duke football team can also offer athletic scholarships to up to 85 students on top of that. Duke’s average non-need-based athletic grant and scholarship amount for first-time freshmen is $37,097, according to the National Collegiate Scouting Association.

Although the University cannot entice prospective students with merit- or athletic-based scholarships, Yale’s average need-based aid is nevertheless generous. In the 2015–16 school year, 51 percent of Yale students received financial aid with an average scholarship of $43,989, according to the Yale financial aid website. Though it did not happen in Morgenstern’s case, the size of Yale’s financial aid packages means that recruits often choose based on factors other than money.

Quansah, a linebacker from Kingswood-Oxford School in West Hartford, Connecticut, said Yale and Duke made equally competitive financial aid offers, but the opportunity to play FBS football away from home was impossible to pass up.

“I would’ve had a full ride [at Yale] and been able to cover it, financially, but the only thing is I didn’t like being close to home,” Quansah said. “I wanted a new start. Yale doesn’t play as many games, and I feel like the level of play wasn’t as high as the top five conferences.”

Crockett, the most decorated of the four recruits, always intended to play for a major conference team. Following a breakout performance at the Nike SPARQ Combine in March of 2015, the running back collected 12 offers from Division I FBS schools, four of which belonged to Power Five conferences, in addition to his conditional offer of support from Yale.

The Little Rock, Alabama native said he was intrigued by the possibility of heading to New England, but when it came time to begin visiting schools, he decided not to stray from the Southeast and Midwest regions. Crockett took five unofficial visits in the summer before his senior season, all to schools with more prominent football programs. Calling the visits “low-key,” Crockett, who hopes to go to the NFL, said he was mainly looking for a school at which he felt comfortable.

“I mean, I didn’t cross schools off the list [when visiting],” he said. “I just pretty much picked the school I felt was best for me.”

Though he originally committed to Boise State in July, Crockett switched his commitment to the University of Missouri, a Southeastern Conference school that spent almost $87 million on its football program in the 2014 fiscal year — nearly $43 million more than Boise State’s $44 million budget, and $84 million more than the $3.2 million figure at Yale.

Whereas Crockett saw a Power Five school as the best path to the NFL, Hartmann said academics were always first on his mind. Citing the desire to receive an excellent education while playing football on a diverse team — something Reno has said on multiple occasions his team takes pride in — Hartmann whittled his options down to Harvard, Yale and Princeton before taking his official visits.

The rise of social media has aided prospects in initiating contact. Since the NCAA deems “all electronically transmitted correspondence” permissible in certain contexts, Twitter has become a quick and easy method of communication. Even Yale’s coaches utilized Twitter: Hartmann recalled coaches reaching out via its direct messaging service to set up phone calls.

“Coach [Derrick] Lett and I were talking pretty much regularly,” said Alan Lamar, a running back from Mississippi who plans to attend Yale next year. “I’d say once or twice a week, and then sometimes I’d call Coach Reno and he’d talk to me. If one of them wanted to call me, they’d shoot me a tweet and I’d call them.”

With regular contact made easier by technology, Hartmann, Lamar, Quansah and Morgenstern all brought up the personal relationships they formed over the phone with their recruiters. All said those relationships factored significantly into their final decisions.

Lamar and Morgenstern, in particular, highlighted the fact that they were able to connect with their recruiters from Yale and Duke, respectively, on topics other than football.

“It came down to the people,” Lamar said. “I really liked Coach Lett and Coach Reno. I felt like they can help me grow as a football player and beyond. It was kind of a no-brainer.”

Reno himself shared similar sentiments, pointing out that a relationship between a player and a coach extends beyond the gridiron during the player’s four years.

“Our staff and our assistant coaches are good people interested in the development of young men on and off the field,” Reno said. “These relationships develop over time, and the staff are in it for the long haul.”

THE TRANSITION TO RENO’S TEAM

With four seasons under his belt, Reno too is in for the long haul, telling the News that he wants to see all of his students graduate. And once the class of 2020 formally matriculates, Reno will, for the first time, coach a team comprised exclusively of players he recruited — something not lost on his team.

Captain and linebacker Darius Manora ’17, a member of the first class Reno recruited from start to finish, pointed out that each coach looks for a different type of personality. Now that the entire team was recruited by Reno, he said, the group is “way more cohesive.”

An immensely talented recruiter in his own right, Reno has surrounded himself with a young, enthusiastic staff. The three full-time coaches who have been with Reno since his hiring in January of 2012, in addition to six who have joined since then, form a unit that crafted the best incoming class in the Football Championship Subdivision, according to 247sports.com.

“I’m amazed at the recruiting system Coach Reno employed when he got here,” said Larry Ciotti, a former running backs coach and current advisor to the head coach. “Before Coach Reno came, we were never in the picture with Harvard. It was like cherry-picking. When Coach Reno came, suddenly Harvard had to battle with us. Most years, we outrecruit Harvard. It comes from the hard work of Coach Reno and our staff.”

Carlton Hall, a former Yale defensive line coach who also worked at Harvard when Reno was an assistant coach there, said Reno brings strong organizational skills to Yale and an ability to attract students from a variety of backgrounds.

Reno said Yale’s extra-athletic opportunities are a major selling point for his program on the recruiting trail. As opposed to the “short-term solution” that a four-year playing career provides, Reno said, Yale football players leave with both the experience of playing Division I football and with a valuable degree that sets them up “for the next 60 years of their lives.”

Therefore, he said, Yale looks for “the 1 percent”: student-athletes who can both compete at a high level and meet the Ivy League’s rigorous academic standards. JP Shohfi, a wide receiver who plans to attend Yale next year, is one example of this type of player: The San Marino, California native holds the national record for most receiving yards in a single season by a high school player, and in the same season he was also named to the California All-State Football Academic Team with a 4.3 GPA.

“[The coaches] really sold us on how great it is to go to Yale,” Shohfi said. “What all of us understand is we value football, but also really want to take advantage of opportunities outside of the sport. The coaches shared how Yale can provide us with opportunities with football and outside of it.”

At least for the recruits, the journey does not stop when they matriculate at Yale. As Morgenstern, Quansah, Hartmann and Crockett begin their collegiate careers, 29 student-athletes who have undergone the same process will arrive in New Haven.

As the members of Yale’s class of 2020 mature, they will become contributors to one of the oldest college football programs in the nation. Still, their accomplishments on the field will not come to define them, Reno said.

“What’s most rewarding is the end result,” Reno said. “It’s great to bring guys here and watch them develop, but what I enjoy most is seeing them beyond football, see them in the community and make an impact on the Yale community.”

Change did come out of the November mass mobilization that student organizers branded “Next Yale”: just five days after students marched to University President Peter Salovey’s house to deliver demands for a more inclusive campus, Salovey sent an email promising a “Better Yale” and outlining policies the University would implement to make it a reality. But while Salovey’s response answered some student demands, more symbolic issues on which students also demanded change, such as the title of residential college master and the naming of Calhoun College, have yet to be addressed.

Months after the bursts of student activism last semester, student organizers are now confronted with the question of how best to sustain the movement’s momentum. Interviews with Next Yale student organizers, leaders of other student activist and advocacy groups and administrators both current and past show that opinions diverge: To create lasting change, is it better to apply grass-roots pressure from the outside or to work within the established system? Or does the most effective advocacy do both?

PRESSURE FROM THE OUTSIDE

Though the group captured national attention last fall, this spring, Next Yale is no longer a daily presence in the lives of student organizers. The group met once at the beginning of the semester and has not formally assembled since.

Student organizers told the News that Next Yale was never meant to be institutionalized: It has no distinct leadership structure and is not registered as a student organization. Instead, it is a coalition of students who joined together and supported each other under the specific circumstances last fall.

“I would describe Next Yale not as an established organization but very much as a group of students who came together out of necessity,” said Yuni Chang ’18, a member of the Asian American Studies Task Force who was active in Next Yale. “It was a group of people born out of immediacy.”

The group’s structure — or lack thereof — is reflective of its approach to effecting change on campus. Next Yale’s organizers said the movement was successful because it exerted bottom-up pressure on the administration rather than working via slower, more conventional pathways like the Yale College Council or advisory committees.

Chang acknowledged that student activism is not completely independent of the Yale institution and its operating system, but said she and other Next Yale organizers believe the most effective strategies take place on a grass-roots level, within networks of communities that trust each other.

Several student organizers said they saw Yale College Dean Jonathan Holloway and the cultural center directors as allies of the movement, but they understood the limitations of the administrators’ roles. Haylee Kushi ’18, who was active with Next Yale and serves as treasurer for the Association of Native Americans at Yale, said working from the outside is more effective because administrators are wary of supporting activism publicly, as they may jeopardize their positions if they are too vocal.

Kushi added that while she thinks administrators like Holloway are sympathetic toward many of the demands that Next Yale outlined, Holloway does not have the power to make important institutional changes, such as the renaming of Calhoun College, on his own. Even Salovey, who many students view as the most powerful individual on campus, must answer to the Yale Corporation. It is therefore critical for students to show the Corporation that they are putting pressure on Holloway, Salovey and other administrators, Kushi said.

Founded in the fall of 2012, Fossil Free Yale — a group of Yalies organizing for climate justice on campus and fighting for Yale to divest its endowment from the fossil free industry — has also employed more activist tactics in the years following its creation.

According to FFY Policy Director Hannah Nesser ’16, who joined the group several months after it was founded, the group initially worked within administrative channels. By the spring of 2013, FFY had developed a report about fossil fuel divestment for the University’s Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility. Later that fall, FFY compiled a petition with around 1,000 student signatures and conducted a referendum through the YCC, in which 83 percent of respondents voted for divestment. The group was organizing on the grass-roots level at the time, Nesser said, but it was not opposing the administration.

But that approach changed in fall 2014, when Salovey sent a University-wide email explicitly stating that Yale would not divest from fossil fuels. According to FFY Communications Director Chelsea Watson ’17, that was when FFY’s tactics became more confrontational. The group had “done everything the administration asked” but still received a flat “no,” Watson said.

Since then, FFY has held rallies, orchestrated a sit-in in Woodbridge Hall and, most recently, protested during United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s speech at a University colloquium. That same day, Yale’s Chief Investment Officer David Swensen announced that two separate fund managers had divested a total of $10 million from the fossil fuel industry, although he cited financial, not ethical, reasons for the decision.

“It’s only when we risk the prestige of Yale and the ability of the administration to maintain this ivory tower that [administrators] feel compelled to take action,” Nesser said. “Student activism has the potential to change how the University functions.”

Lex Barlowe ’17, a Next Yale student organizer who was also active in Fossil Free Yale, said both members of Next Yale and FFY understand that because of the way Yale’s decision-making structure works, it is necessary to put pressure on the system from the outside. Last November was about displaying student power and challenging the Yale institution, Barlowe added.

Rather than working with the administration, both Next Yale and FFY student organizers said they have focused on coalition-building amongst themselves.

Watson emphasized that building friendships, not just working relationships, in FFY is critical to maintaining the group’s spirit. Activism is exhausting and requires hard work, Watson said, and students infrequently receive the results they seek.

“It’s very easy to get burned out, so one of the important elements of sustaining activism is having moments when we rest, reflect and bond with each other,” Watson said.

Similarly, by bringing together students from all four cultural centers and advocates for causes from different corners of the University, Next Yale student organizer Nat Aramayo ’17 said, Next Yale ultimately built a sense of trust among organizers. Barlowe also emphasized that community building and connecting people both within and across communities are important for sustaining the momentum from last fall.

Sebi Medina-Tayac ’16, a Next Yale student organizer and peer liaison for the Native American Cultural Center who is also a staff reporter for the News, said there has been and always will be sustained student advocacy for change on Yale’s campus. Next Yale’s lack of action this semester should not be seen as a failure, he said; rather, the spirit and tools of activism will be passed between students, from one generation to the next, via the relationships they build.

For example, the Association of Native Americans at Yale, the Asian American Studies Task Force, the Black Student Association at Yale and Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán all collaborated to host the first-ever intercultural colloquium at the Asian American Cultural Center last Friday, during which students presented their academic work in ethnic studies. Such a dialogue had previously been unheard of, Kushi said.

Chang also said Next Yale has provided a solid foundation for future collaboration and activism.

“If you build relationships with other student organizers, and those relationships are based on a deep love for a more just world, then those relationships will sustain you as well as a community of people who care and want to do something to change the status quo,” Chang said.

ADVOCACY FROM WITHIN

But not all student activist and advocacy groups on campus eschew established structures as the primary vehicles for change. Many see raising awareness through semester-long and sometimes yearlong educational programming as the first step to improving the campus climate. They recommend working alongside administrators — or at least not in opposition to them — as the best strategy for making a long-lasting impact.

Unite Against Sexual Assault Yale, founded by Helen Price ’18 and Anthony D’Ambrosio ’18 at the beginning of this school year, aims to promote a healthier sexual environment on campus. Several women of color who were active members of Next Yale last semester sit on USAY’s board.

“While the Next Yale focused on specific racial issues, it also paved the way for broader conversations about improving Yale’s safety and inclusivity,” Price said, adding that sexual violence affects women of color at a disproportionate rate. “We’ve been lucky to benefit from the work of Next Yale.”

Unlike Next Yale, however, USAY is structured: Price and D’Ambrosio co-direct a board of 10 people, hold regular meetings and work toward a long-term vision for the organization. Several USAY members are also student representatives on the Undergraduate Title IX Advisory Committee. The group has partnered with Communication and Consent Educators and other organizations to plan events that have attracted the support of University administrators such as University Title IX Coordinator Stephanie Spangler and Assistant Dean of Student Affairs Melanie Boyd.

USAY is still in its first year of existence, but D’Ambrosio, who also serves as Dwight Hall’s co-coordinator, said USAY has plans to join Dwight Hall in the future and tap into the resources of Yale’s larger, more institutionalized community of service.

“Our goal for the next 20 years is to bring the conversation to everyone at Yale. We want to create a space where people can discuss what’s going on [with Yale’s sexual culture],” D’Ambrosio said.

Both D’Ambrosio and Price said they are confident USAY’s values will live on, regardless of particular events or even the specific climate at the moment.

Mind Matters is another student-led advocacy group that works within established channels to engage members of the Yale community. Mind Matters Co-President Eli Feldman ’16 said the organization is not an activist group, because policy change has not been a central part of its mission. Instead, through speaker events, forums and other programming, Mind Matters hopes to educate students about mental health issues on campus and serve as a liaison between individual students and the mental health community. Feldman himself sits on Yale Health’s Mental Health and Counseling Advisory Committee for Yale College and has worked closely with administrators to discuss policy changes regarding mental health on campus.

Throughout his time at Yale, Feldman said he has seen many students react “like fireworks” to emotional events but then “simmer down very quickly.” Despite what happened last fall, Feldman said campus has already decreased its engagement with topics of race this semester. The issue with activism at Yale, he added, is that too often it is fueled by emotion but not substantiated with goals, foresight and effective planning.

“Protesting and getting [the administration’s] attention to an issue is valid,” Feldman told the News. “But eventually people stop being angry because they can only do that for so long. Collaborating and working with the administration is a smarter approach. It’s more likely to get what you want.”

According to Holloway, student organizers face the challenge of navigating the various spheres of the University that operate on different time frames: undergraduates work within a four-year window, while administrators usually think in blocks of five to 10 years. Additionally, the Yale Corporation makes decisions by taking 40- to 60-year blocks into consideration, and tenured faculty members also tend to think in much longer time frames.

To have long-lasting change, Holloway emphasized, student organizers should focus on working with administrators.

“Let’s say I am really sympathetic to everything the activists were calling for in the fall. If they’re not able to secure a structural change with my help within the next three years or so, there will be a different dean, and that person will certainly have different values. Things will be of different importance to him or her,” he said. “If there’s no structural change by which that dean has to abide, the change may as well not have happened.”

FINDING A MIDDLE GROUND?

When the YCC was established in 1972, student representatives wanted to ensure that undergraduates had “a legitimate voice in Yale’s governance,” according to the body’s website. But recent campus activism has tested whether the council can truly bridge the gap between students rallying outside and administrators working inside.

One of the YCC’s usual approaches is to solicit student input and write reports that it then presents to the administration. The council did this with its 2015 report on financial aid policy, which detailed dissatisfaction with the student income contribution and other aspects in need of reform.

The report, along with calls for change from student activist groups like Next Yale and Students Unite Now, led to a YCC town hall last December at which Director of Financial Aid Caesar Storlazzi and Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Jeremiah Quinlan announced that the student summer income contribution will drop starting next school year.

During all of this, Chauncey said, the Black student leadership never let the administration forget its goals and did exert pressure, though the ultimate objective from both sides was to work together.

“I think we had wonderful working arrangement with the Black students which resulted in a wonderful major, a first-rate cultural center and the students being involved in taking a major role in the recruitment of new students,” Chauncey said.

David Wilk ’72, an alumnus who witnessed the period of change Chauncey described, said Brewster’s administration was “brilliant at co-opting the middle,” and collaboration led to real changes in Yale’s climate.

Aramayo said many Next Yale student organizers today are “always willing to work with the administration” but added that students often face the question of access. Students had to demand administrators’ time in order to speak with them, Aramayo said.

Barlowe also emphasized that by demonstrating student power first and then approaching the administration, student organizers can put forth a more compelling agenda.

“If you build a lot of power behind [your cause] through organizing, and then you go to the negotiating table with the administration, then you’re going to be more persuasive and powerful,” she said.

The process of change is “a marathon, not a sprint,” in the words of Rose Bear Don’t Walk ’16, a Next Yale student organizer and head peer liaison for the Native American Cultural Center.

And student organizers acknowledged that it is impossible for them to work completely apart from the Yale institution. Their very identity as Yale students make them part of the system, some students said.

“Participation in the cultural centers, and their many advocacy-based organizations like MEChA, ANAAY and BSAY, is itself working with the administration to make changes, as the cultural centers are a function of the dean’s office,” Medina-Tayac said. “Obviously, we have a more direct line of communication with our [cultural center] deans, who this year especially have been firm advocates for student needs … [The rest of the administration] needs more pressure from students and the media to act in a meaningful way.”

Afro-American Cultural Center Director Risë Nelson said she sees herself as an active advocate for students both at the Af-Am House and across campus who seek positive change through “institutionalized policies and procedures.”

To sustain activism, Nelson said it is important to have discussions at every level of the institution and encourage collaboration between students, faculty members, administrators and alumni.

“We all must actively work toward that goal [of a better campus climate that supports all students] because we are all members of this community,” Nelson said. “I think the University has had to revisit some tough existential questions — what is the Yale experience? What does Yale stand for? — especially as we seek to be leaders in creating equity in our world class education, teaching and research.”

Barlowe said putting pressure on the system is not necessarily a rejection of the system. The act of demanding change at Yale, Barlowe added, is a show of faith in the institution’s ability to reform and become more attentive to the needs of traditionally marginalized communities.

And so, Medina-Tayac added, students of color on this campus will continue to work both within and outside of University-sanctioned venues to achieve their goals.

In sustaining the momentum of activism and making productive changes on this campus, perhaps neither just external pressure nor internal deliberation is enough. Administrators and student organizers alike recognize that they need a combination of approaches.

“Historically, change only happens when both student activism and taking time to work inside the system exist, and the same applies to Yale,” said Alex Zhang ’18, co-chair of the Asian American Studies Task Force. “You can be defiant while working with administrators.”

UP CLOSE:
New Haven, a new millennial magnet

by Jiahui Hu

Published on April 25, 2016

Elm City Social opened last July. Since then, the bar’s wood paneling and jazz notes of modern hits have transported patrons to the pre-prohibition era. Bartenders in all black serve up craft cocktails such as The Black Widow, which combines absinthe and Sauvignon Blanc with deep cherry notes, and The Rubber Ducky, which is served to patrons complete with a yellow duck floating atop the ginbased mix.

The opening of the craft cocktail establishment — the sort of bar that might seem more at home on a side street in Manhattan than in a city 60 times smaller than New York — is not an anomaly in the Elm City. At least, not any more.

A decade ago, visitors to downtown New Haven would have encountered parking lots interspersed with boarded-up shop windows and the odd retail store or two, said Chuck Mascola, who has lived in the city since the 1980s and now runs an advertising firm. Now, in 2016, parking is impossible to find and commerce thrives on every block, Mascola said.

“It was sleepy,” Mascola said. “There were nice things, but crummy things mixed into it. Now it is hard to find eyesores or to see anything that disturbs a great urban landscape.”

“You find a city that is seamless,” he added. New Haven has quickly transformed from its 1990s reputation as a crime-ridden wasteland to a burgeoning commercial zone that is quickly attracting a flurry of new residents.

But what has been the driving force behind the city’s change of pace?

People — young people. And lots of them.

As the Millennial Generation — born of the baby boomers, between 1980 and 2000 — transition to adulthood, New Haven has seen its under-35 population increase by 45 percent. Millennials have been graduating from college and moving to cities since the turn of the century. With the net increase in young educated professionals with money to spend on luxury lofts, cocktails and restaurant options, New Haven entrepreneurs, developers and government officials have seized the opportunity for lasting economic growth beyond Yale’s gates.

(Yale Daily News)

WHO ARE THE MILLENNIALS?

Atlanta-native Melody Oliphant is no stranger to changes of scenery. After attending boarding school in Tennessee and college at Wesleyan, Oliphant needed to find a medical job in New Haven if she wanted to live and work alongside her girlfriend of one year, who returned from a fellowship in Rio de Janeiro with a job offer in the Elm City. Oliphant, who previously worked as a genetics researcher at New York’s Icahn School of Medicine, secured a two-year fellowship at the Yale Child Study Center. She and her girlfriend are two of the several hundred net recent college graduates that move to New Haven each year.

Taking into account the number of college graduates who leave New Haven, Elm City has seen a yearly net increase of 300 to 400 of this demographic between 2000 and 2012, said Mark Abraham, president of Data Haven — a New Haven-based data analysis nonprofit.

This demographic change is a microcosm of a larger national trend. Although college grads typically move to cities, there is a much larger cohort of 25–35-year-olds in the U.S. — who make up the majority of millennials — than there have been ever before.

The Elm City’s 45 percent boon in recent college graduates matches that of common “yuppie magnets,” such as Nashville, Tennessee; Denver, Colorado; and Austin, Texas. New Haven’s increase also exceeds that of Northeast metro areas Boston, Massachusetts and Providence, Rhode Island, where the percentage growth during the given time period was 12 and 6 percent, respectively.

In fact, Abraham said, adjusting for overall population growth, New Haven may be attracting and retaining a higher proportion of college-educated adults than Austin, Texas or Houston, Texas which are traditionally known as hubs for this cohort.

Matthew Nemerson SOM ’81, city economic development administrator, provided historical perspective on the recent trend. When baby boomers, who are the parents of the millennials, graduated from college in the mid-1980s, a large influx of young educated professionals moved to New Haven, similar to what is happening today, Nemerson said. But less than a decade later, these professionals departed for the suburbs to raise their families, he added.

Mascola and the young professionals interviewed all recounted childhood memories of living in the suburbs. But many say they are questioning the idealized model of a suburban family lifestyle, given their experience living in or near downtown New Haven.

“I wanted to move some place closer to work,” said Jenny D’Amico, who works for Yale Health Plan and moved from a Connecticut suburb to an apartment between downtown and Hamden.

D’Amico added, “The idea of being able to walk to work was really cool. It’s also a really good city for young people, especially down Chapel Street, by the [New Haven] Green and by the hospital.”

Although Oliphant and D’Amico happen to be Yale employees, many more of the city’s new influx of educated young professionals work for small tech companies and biopharma firms.

WHERE DO THEY WORK?

Last summer, Arvinas CFO Sean Cassidy considered taking his company — one of the most successful biotechs based in New Haven — out of the city. A lack of lab space almost convinced him that the company’s future was elsewhere in the Northeast.

But City Hall administrators caught wind of the rumor that Cassidy would leave New Haven and take his $300-million-deal-scoring biopharm with him.

Nemerson said the city estimated that each Arvinas employee that left the city would take 150 other jobs with them. Though Arvinas has only 30 employees, Enrico Moretti, an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, argues that each high-tech job creates five new jobs in the city it is based in.

Moretti’s research indicates that job markets are larger in cities with high-tech industries because employees tend to spend large proportions of their salaries on local businesses, such as housekeeping, therapy and restaurants.

In response to these predictions, the city hastened to assist Arvinas’ purchase of more lab space. By mid-October, the company had signed a deal on a 5,000 square foot lot in Science Park.

For Nemerson, the proactivity exhibited by the city to keep Arvinas must continue for the city’s job market to grow.

“The main thing right now that will determine whether we hold onto this population will be the continued introduction and evolution of modern knowledge-based jobs,” Nemerson said. “Companies like Alexion, Achillion and Arvinas become our future.”

The Elm City’s advantages lie in its low rents and wealth of available space for expansion, Nemerson said. Biotech companies looking to expand can easily purchase new space, which is not the case in the crowded real estate market of Cambridge.

In January of this year, the city regained one of its greatest success stories. Alexion Pharmaceuticals — a $2.64 billion biopharmaceutical founded in Science Park that employs roughly 1,200 people — moved into its new headquarters to 100 College St. after leaving the Elm City in 2000 due to difficulties securing enough lab space to serve its needs.

At the company’s ribbon-cutting ceremony in February, Mayor Toni Harp expressed excitement for what Alexion could do for New Haven’s economic development.

“Our economic base is growing stronger as our innovative businesses collaborate with global ones,” Harp said. “New Haven is a model of progressive urban development of national significance.”

Nemerson added that tech companies such as Prometheus Research and Square 9: Softworks also provide significant employment opportunities.

As Arvinas and Alexion employees settle into their new home in the Elm City, they — together with other members of the Millennial Generation — must think carefully about how to make New Haven their home. But where do they tend to pin down their roots?

WHERE DO THEY LIVE?

Yale postdoctoral associate Chloe Taft GRD ’14 teaches a seminar titled the History of Housing in America. She and her class took a March tour of the high-end apartment building, The Novella, which opened last year and offers studios from $1,400 and two-bedroom apartments for $3,200 at the very cheapest.

During the tour, property developers explicitly told her class they were targeting Yale graduate students and young professionals like those at Alexion.

“Downtown New Haven has become a hot site for developers seeking to cash in on a young professional demographic,” Taft told the News. “The majority of these new projects bill themselves as ‘luxury apartments’ and do not include affordable units, although Winchester Lofts does include some.”

Roger Lopez ’18, a student in the class, recounted The Novella’s extensive amenities: a gym, private movie theaters, a rooftop terrace and more. Lopez said residents pay roughly two times the average market price in New Haven for an apartment in The Novella for a sense of community — something that 30-year-olds look for when they relocate.

As Taft’s students toured the building, The Novella’s property manager added that residents were also paying to insulate themselves from the rest of New Haven, which is still perceived as unsafe.

“The tour guide said that you’re paying to not have to walk past the Green and go into the ghettos of New Haven,” Lopez said. “It’s a community in a one-block radius. Rudy’s is across the street. Miya’s is down the block and Yale is right next door.”

(Yale Daily News)

With vacancy rates among the lowest in the country, New Haven is also attracting developers hoping to cash in on the high demand for housing. Given the development projects currently underway, by 2017, there will be approximately 2,000 more new apartment units than at the end of 2015. Almost all will be luxury apartments like The Novella.

Other recent developments include the Winchester Lofts, which opened in Science Park in 2013. College & Crown: A Centerpiece went live for rent last year. 360 State St., which opened in 2010, was one of the earliest and also the quickest to be leased-out, Pearce Real Estate President Barbara Pearce said.

“Because of students, New Haven has one of the lowest vacancy rates in the country,” Pearce said. “Now there is a race to keep on [building]. State Street rented so quickly. Eventually like everywhere else, we will stop building once the vacancy rate goes up.”

From the rooftop terrace of The Novella, residents can spot dozens of new bars and restaurants to visit — another consequence of the Millennial Generation’s migration into the Elm City.

WHAT ARE THEY DRINKING AND EATING?

Craig Sklar grew up in New Haven before he entered the beer industry in New York City. For seven years he brewed and bottled the malted drink for Whole Foods Market and then S.K.I. Beer.

Last year, Sklar decided to open a craft beer bar of his own. He chose the Elm City because rent prices in New York City were too high, he said. This summer, his bar The Beer Collective will open on 130 Court St., which is located just three blocks from Old Campus.

Like Sklar, many entrepreneurs and restaurateurs are choosing to take a chance on New Haven due to how cheap it is to rent out a brick-and-mortar site, said Chris Nicotra, who has been an investor in New Haven real estate for the past decade and a half.

According to Nicotra, rent in the Elm City is still well-below that of Manhattan despite having risen steadily to $100 per square foot for commercial space downtown. In the past month, Nicotra has met with several investors from Boston and Providence who have taken note of New Haven’s recent growth and low rent.

“[Entrepreneurs, restaurateurs and developers] see this young demographic of the city and see how they can capture their needs,” Nicotra said. “With The Beer Collective, you’re taking this really hot beer concept and really hot New Haven. The combination is a home run.”

(Yale Daily News)

Other home runs — popular bars and restaurants that cater to the young — include Ordinary, Kelly’s, Cask Republic, Barcelona and BAR. In the upcoming months, the owners of Mecha Noodle Bar will open an unannounced concept restaurant that they hope will be novel, like the restaurant-arcade combination Barcade that will open in New Haven this summer.

In the past decade, this pop-up of unique restaurants has made New Haven a foodie destination, Pearce said. Although famous, places like Louis’ Lunch did not transform New Haven into a food capital of the Northeast, she said. But in recent years, restaurants are full in downtown New Haven every night of the week.

“There’s been an explosion beyond what it was before,” Pearce said. “Before it was just pizza and Italian. Young professionals now will spend a greater percentage of their income on food than people did before.”

As investors succeed in the Elm City, opening restaurants and leisure venues such as Karaoke Heroes, their young professional patrons have built a community around their products.

“In the past, I would have said that I would have moved into the suburbs and bought a house,” Josh Levinson, a 35-year-old software engineer, said. “But the more that I am here, I love it and love being a part of the community.”

Bars and restaurants such as Olea, Zinc and Elm City Social receive paragraphs-long reviews on Yelp by the site’s active contributors. Levinson, who is among those that rave about New Haven’s food scene, also operates a blog “Between Two Rocks” where he publicizes his reviews of bars, restaurants and the best pizza in New Haven.

With these new high-rise apartment buildings, five-star restaurants and swanky bars, New Haven is well on the way to transforming its past reputation.

WHAT IS THE CITY’S NEW REPUTATION?

Mascola, born in 1958, did not leave his native New Haven until he turned 18 and moved to Ohio for college. Upon graduating from Dayton University, Mascola worked on Madison Avenue before returning to the Elm City to found the Mascola Group advertising agency. His firm serves companies far and wide, including many based overseas. But one of his most loyal customers is right across from the Green: City Hall.

For the past four years, Mascola has been helping the New Haven Parking Authority promote the new meter system downtown, which he described as the “welcome mats” to New Haven. He added that well-advertised parking meters should convince visitors that downtown is a place to not only play, but also live and work.

He said his dream project would be to create a marketing plan for the city of New Haven. The city should tout its vibrant arts culture, rental prices, economic growth and other attractions for both the young and elderly across the region.

“New Haven has the product and delivers on the experience for younger people and older people,” Mascola said. “What we’re not really doing is packaging and selling that, even though it’s happening without us putting it into a marketing component and giving it a great position line.”

But what is New Haven’s product?

Fun, cosmopolitan and cultured living for a fraction of the cost of New York City living expenses, Nemerson said.

At the forefront of this new reputation is the city’s recent acclaim as a food destination. Levinson added that the city’s recent expansion of bike lanes and sophisticated new apartment buildings have contributed to the city’s new visage as a destination for young adults looking for a modern lifestyle.

Over the past 10 years, the atmosphere downtown on a Friday night has also changed to mirror the sophistication of Manhattan, manager partner of Elm City Social Ryan Howard said.

“The scene in New Haven is really transcending toward a more refined craft era,” Howard said. “It’s in a less clubby stage with more of your craft cocktail and beer elegance, if you will.”

To Nemerson, New Haven’s reputation is a key factor in the city’s retention of jobs. One of the most important considerations for biotech companies deciding on whether to stay in the city for the long haul is the quality of life that the city would provide for their employees, Nemerson said.

To prevent the city’s leading high-tech companies from leaving, Nemerson said he needed to not only facilitate the growth of a high-tech hub in the city, but also show the company’s employees that they would lead an exciting life in the Elm City. The city demonstrates it is an appealing place to live as well as work, he said, with arts, culture and rental prices that are almost 60 percent lower than those in Cambridge or New York City.

“If you have enough people who say that this is a cool place to hang out and spend time, then the software and biotech jobs will come and say we want to hire you and we want you to stay here and have you be happy,’” Nemerson said.

In addition to the growth of high-tech jobs, city officials also hope to persuade New York commuters to live in the Elm City, where rent is lower and the quality of life is comparable to cities such as Stamford, White Plains and New Rochelle.

Taft reaffirmed that all the private housing and business developments — many of which have been publicly supported by the city — fit into city officials’ plans to “rebrand” New Haven and attract a creative class of young professionals including graduate students, researchers, entrepreneurs and artists.

When asked how he would market the city, New Haven native Mascola responded in glowing terms.

New Haven, Mascola said, deserves a brand that is much more illustrious than the city’s current reputation. The combination of creativity outside of Yale’s walls as well as the presence of the University would create a convincing message that the Elm City is, indeed, an attractive place to live.

“New Haven is a brilliant city,” Mascola said. “It is America’s brilliant city. It shines.”

While downtown New Haven glitters on, the sparkle is less brilliant for New Haven’s poorer population, many of whom can no longer afford to live, eat and play in the downtown area.

WHO ARE MILLENNIALS REPLACING?

Last October, West Haven native Kiana Marie Hernandez ’18 sat down with the News.

She and her mother had just spent a year searching the Elm City for an apartment to call home. As they traveled from apartment to apartment, debates about prices —not amenities or decorating styles —lengthened their search.

Hernandez and her mother are not alone.

With the scheduled demolition of Church Street South — a 300-unit affordable housing complex condemned by the city last fall — at least several hundred families in New Haven must enter a housing market that is both tight and high-priced.

Edward Mattison LAW ’68, a member of the mayor’s City Plan Committee, recounted a visit to a homeless shelter for families. Every single family in the shelter possessed federal housing vouchers to subsidize rent. But none of them had been able to find vacant units of affordable housing to spend their vouchers on.

Mattison and Hernandez are not the only ones who have spoken out about New Haven’s alarming shortage of housing for low-income families. Since the federal Department of Housing and Urban development began to relocate families last fall from the complex, it has discovered that it is particularly difficult to keep these families in New Haven because of the city’s dearth of affordable housing units.

Taft, who completed her doctoral thesis on urban planning, said the question that remains is how New Haven residents who face high poverty levels and a severe shortage of affordable housing units will benefit from the city’s economic growth.

“Can some of the investment going to downtown go to address inequalities in other parts of New Haven?” Taft said. “And is the city getting a good return on investment with the incentives it offers developers downtown, or are those profits mostly going to the developers?”

The mayor, Nemerson said, hopes to ensure that downtown New Haven is an integrated community in terms of income and race. According to Nemerson, the city’s new housing developments benefit all demographics of the city’s population by adding supply to the housing market to lower prices. Former Downtown Alder Abigail Roth ’90 LAW ’94 added that the new housing developments will provide revenue to the city to subsidize affordable housing.

But the plight of the city’s poor can be difficult to remember amidst the luxury amenities of The Novella and the hip, dim lighting in New Haven’s newest bars.

Oliphant said she has noticed that New Haven is highly segregated with strict geographical boundaries of race and class. She added that issues of segregation, though not unique to New Haven, are particularly noticeable because of the city’s small size and wealth contrasts in East Rock, Wooster Square and downtown.

“[In New Haven], I often find myself disheartened by the way people, especially so-called progressive people, talk about low- and middle-income neighborhoods that are populated predominantly by people of color,” Oliphant said. “And while the problems in New Haven may not be entirely unique, I do think there’s tremendous potential in locally powered solutions that could prove unique to the communities they’re intended to serve.”

If Nemerson and Roth are correct and the city’s new gentrification will benefit all, how long will that process last?

ON TO BETTER THINGS?

D’Amico said she will not stay in the Elm City forever.

Many young professionals choose to begin a family in residential neighborhoods such as East Rock and Wooster Square that are still reasonably close to downtown, D’Amico said. But New Haven’s reputation as a city with a high crime rate lingers on in D’Amico’s mind. She said the noise of sirens, gunshots and ambulance trucks prevent her from beginning a family anywhere in the city.

“There’s a lot of stuff that I wouldn’t want my kids to be exposed to at a very young age,” D’Amico said. “There’s a lot of poverty. While this is important for everybody to realize, it’s hard to deal with that kind of thing as a child.”

D’Amico’s reluctance to remaining in the city is exactly what Nemerson and other economic development officials in the city dread. They hope that the young professionals currently flooding into New Haven will either move from downtown to streets in the city with stand-alone houses and grassy front lawns. By remaining in New Haven, this demographic will continue to attract businesses, developers and more like-minded professionals to the Elm City.

In a good omen for city officials, key indicators suggest New Haven’s cohort of millennials will not abandon the city, at least, not any time soon.

Unlike their parents, the Millennial Generation is choosing to begin families later in their lives. Young educated professionals in New Haven will continue pursuing the single-life — with high-rise apartments and regular revelry at Elm City Social — for longer than their parents did. Levinson confirmed that he and many of his friends are enjoying their historically lengthy youth.

“[A lot of people I know in New Haven] don’t have kids or want to buy a house — the path that a traditional lifestyle would lead them to,” Levinson said. “A lot of people are delaying buying a house and having a family. They’re pushing it out further and they are enjoying being young.”

The recent influx of the forever young millennials has also been accompanied by their parents’ move into the city.

Hundreds of empty nesters in nearby suburbs have sold their homes to buy apartments downtown, a trend completely new to the Elm City, Pearce said, adding that apartments on 360 State St. or 100 York St. are particularly popular options.

Pearce added that only in New York City have retired adults moved back downtown after raising children in the suburbs. They did so to avoid having to drive, Pearce said.

She conjectured that in New Haven, the recent boom in construction and desire to be close to children has convinced the elderly to trade their grassy lawns for a downtown loft.

“My father moved from his big house in [Greater] New Haven to Whitney Grove Square,” Pearce said. “That was unusual. Now it is very common for people to do stuff like that. If you just took one building at 100 York you would find it astonishing how many people who live elsewhere in Greater New Haven now live there.”

This and the Millennial Generation’s decision to begin families later in life will combine to make the current demographic wave longer and larger, Nemerson said.

Mascola said that signs from his market research suggest many millennials will remain in the city, whether they decide to move into residential neighborhoods or defy their suburban upbringing by raising children downtown.

Mascola learned from his firm’s marketing campaign for the Union, an apartment building on 205 Church St., that the majority of people moving into the building were young adults with children. They wanted to raise their children in the vibrant arts culture that can only be found downtown, Mascola said.

“The new generation came up and wanted to do a different thing,” Mascola said. “They don’t want to go to a mall in a suburban town. They want to go downtown.”

UP CLOSE:
In sports, gender disparities persist

by Daniela Brighenti

Published on April 21, 2016

On Feb. 20, the Yale men’s hockey team celebrated its senior night at a sold-out Ingalls Rink. The Bulldogs defeated Clarkson University, 3–1, in the presence of 3,500 fans from the Yale and greater New Haven communities.

Just a week earlier, the Yale women’s hockey team’s class of 2016 had its own senior night, playing in its last home regular season contest against conference opponent Cornell University. There was one key difference: This time, 444 fans showed up to the game.

The disparities extend beyond Ingalls Rink. Yale men’s teams in general bring overwhelmingly more fans to the stands than women’s teams. And on the sidelines, head coaches of men’s teams last year made nearly $40,000 more, on average, than those of women’s teams — the second-highest wage gap in Ivy League athletic departments.

Much of the discrepancy stems from a larger societal trend: Nationwide, members of women’s sports teams get paid less than their men’s sports counterparts. Most recently, a federal complaint filed by members of the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team alleged wage discrimination based on gender, noting that the women on the team make at least 40 percent less than players on the men’s national team, despite more prominent success on the field.

Interviews with Yale head coaches, athletics administrators and over 45 students, including 30 athletes of both genders across 27 of Yale’s 35 varsity teams, shed light on the current state of women’s sports at the collegiate level — and at Yale, specifically.

BUILDING A BALANCED ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT

When asked what helps make a sports program competitively strong, Yale Director of Athletics Tom Beckett cited factors such as budget, equipment, team culture and coaching. He added that the athletic department’s goal is “to strive to win championships in all programs.”

(Robbie Short, Staff Photographer)

“We seek to create equal opportunities to support all of our athletic teams,” Beckett said. “Often we make strategic investments in programs in order to improve or sustain, their win-loss record.”

On the issue of budget, specifically, numbers available through the U.S. Department of Education show that men’s and women’s sports are treated relatively equally at Yale. Without counting the $3,205,058 spent on football — which necessitates very high expenses but has a self-supporting budget — expenditures on men’s sports totaled $7,769,336 in 2014–15, and women’s sports expenses were only slightly lower, percentage-wise, at $7,418,521.

Still, data show a discrepancy in the salaries of coaches, whom the majority of people interviewed, including Beckett, described as an important factor for seeing success on the fields.

College coaches are responsible for recruiting athletes, developing their skills and, during games, strategizing against opponents. The best of them, such as Nick Saban of Alabama football or Geno Auriemma of Connecticut women’s basketball, command salaries well into the seven-figures.

At Yale, the average salary for a head coach of a men’s team in 2014–15 was $123,564. For women’s teams that number was nearly $40,000 lower, at $83,824.

Similarly, Yale assistant coaches for men’s teams earn an average of $61,278, while those for women’s teams make $37,239.

Here, too, football, a sport with high expenses and no women’s team equivalent, plays a role in skewing these numbers. But with 16 head coach salaries included in the average for men’s teams and 18 for women’s, Yale football head coach Tony Reno would have had to command a salary of $719,664 to cause the disjunction entirely.

Beckett said those 2014–15 figures represent just a “one-year snapshot” of the athletic department, and that statistics over time are a more accurate representation of Yale expenditures on coaches’ salaries. But over the past five years, the wage gap at Yale has averaged $39,352, second-highest in the Ivy League, and over the past 10, it averaged $27,758, again the second-highest in the conference.

(Samuel Wang, Production & Design Editor)

Princeton, with a 10-year average difference of $13,931 between men’s team and women’s team head coach salaries — and a narrower gap of $5,563 last year — has historically had the most equivalence in salaries. Cornell, at $37,783 over the past 10 years, has shown the biggest differences.

Beckett said that when determining a coach’s salary, the department considers experience, time of tenure and competitive performance, as well as data on positions at comparable institutions from the Western Management Group, which compiles data using surveys of participating institutions.

Women’s lacrosse head coach Erica LaGrow said that factors such as longevity, experience and results are used to decide who is hired and how much they are paid, regardless of gender.

Still, a member of the women’s swimming and diving team thought that increasing the expenditure on head coaches of women’s sports would be helpful in equalizing the department.

“Women’s teams need good coaches and better recruiters so our teams can make similar gains that our male programs have done in recent years,” the swimmer said. “Numbers like that — a pay gap of $40,000 — help indicate that women’s and men’s teams do not get the same level of coaches and recruiters.”

The head coach of a women’s team, who asked to remain anonymous, said a coach’s salary raise is always directly related to his or her team’s performance.

“But if you don’t get the things you need [in order] to be successful, it becomes kind of a cycle,” the coach said. “Some of the teams are always going to get that percentage [raise].”

Some students interviewed speculated that the disparity in wages might be related to the difference in revenue made by women’s and men’s teams. Auriemma, for example, makes $2 million, while UConn men’s basketball head coach Kevin Ollie makes $3 million. Auriemma himself has explained publicly that the difference is due to the fact that Ollie’s program brings in more money than the UConn women’s team does.

Revenues for Yale men’s sports, not including football, totaled $7,794,993 in 2014–15, while those for women’s sports was $7,433,085. However, this data is not entirely useful in examining external revenue from sources such as ticket sales and fundraisers. Former Senior Associate Athletic Director Forrest Temple told the News last year that revenues allocated to teams include annual endowment yield, in addition to annual giving and team-specific revenues.

Still, Beckett did not list revenue as a determining factor for a coach’s salary. He also said endowments for coaching positions — which exist for more than half of Yale teams and are nearly evenly distributed across teams of both genders, including men’s and women’s basketball, men’s and women’s hockey and women’s lacrosse — do not play a role in determining compensation.

AT PRINCETON: MORE MONEY, SUCCESS, FANS

Princeton is a notable exception to the Ivy League’s wage gaps, with a difference of men’s and women’s sports coaching salaries more than three times smaller than at the average Ancient Eight school over the last five years.

The school has had the highest salary for head coaches of women’s teams in the 2014–15 school year, at $104,195. Columbia, the Ivy school with the second-highest such average, pays the head coaches of its women’s teams’ nearly $20,000 less, at an average of $86,060.

Princeton has also won the most Ivy League Championships in not just women’s sports, but also men’s sports over the past 10 years. Women at Princeton tallied 57 Ivy titles between 2005–06 and 2014–15, and the men have recorded 51 over the same period. At Yale, these numbers are 18 and 15, respectively, and Yale has also recorded three Ivy titles — men’s squash, men’s hockey and men’s basketball — thus far in the current school year.

(Samuel Wang, Production & Design Editor)

Notably, in three sports for which Yale men’s teams have garnered significant attention and success in 2015–16 — basketball, hockey and lacrosse — Princeton’s women have been competitive on a national level this year. In addition to an at-large bid to the 2016 NCAA Tournament in women’s basketball, the Tigers finished No. 7 in women’s hockey and are currently ranked No. 11 in women’s lacrosse.

That success has translated to more fans in the stands. In the 2015–16 season, the number of spectators at Princeton’s women’s basketball games averaged 1,158, according to Princeton’s public attendance records.

While that is still just about half the number of fans who gather for the Princeton men’s basketball team — which was undefeated at home, and finished second in the Ivy League to Yale with a 12–2 conference record — it is nearly six times larger than the average fan base at Yale’s women’s basketball games.

IN RECRUITING POLICIES, LITTLE CLARITY

The best coaches are often the strongest recruiters. Coaches at Ivy League schools, especially, are tasked with the challenge of recruiting talented players while also conforming to a unique set of conference policies.

The Ivy League enforces a cap on the number of athletes a school may recruit, in addition to academic standards that each class of recruited athletes must meet.

The Academic Index, established by the Ivy League in the 1980s, gives college applicants a score, generally thought to have a maximum of 240, corresponding to their high school GPAs and standardized test scores. According to a 2012 New York Times article, Ivy League schools cannot admit a recruited athlete with an AI below 176, with very few exceptions, and the overall group of recruited athletes at a school cannot have an average AI lower than one standard deviation below that of the school’s entire student body.

(Hope Allchin, Contributing Photographer)

In late 2011, Beckett told the Times that his department gives each coach a target AI to meet with his or her recruiting classes. Now five years later, when asked if these targets vary between men’s and women’s teams, Beckett told the News only that a “set of individual and cohort-based academic standards” exists both for Yale and the Ivy League. He added that all admissions decisions are made by the Yale Office of Admissions, and he declined to comment further.

Yale Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Jeremiah Quinlan said the AI is not something the Admissions Office heavily considers, as the office does a “holistic review” of each applicant. He added that he did not think there is any connection between Academic Index policy and team success.

“All the recruited athletes, as a group, have an AI that is close to the AI of the enrolled students,” Quinlan said. “To me, there’s no difference between reviewing a male applicant and a female applicant.”

The anonymous women’s team coach, however, contended that recruiting decisions made in the athletic department often advantage certain teams over others.

The coach described a prevalent “hierarchy” in the Yale athletic department, in which benefits are often given to the department’s “favorite sports.”

“If you have someone like a [world-class athlete] that you’d like to get in there, [the athletics administration] says that they will try to help you, but I don’t think they try as hard for some of the sports as they would for a number one hockey player from Canada,” the coach said.

DISPARITY IN THE STANDS

Perhaps the most visual representation of the divide in men’s and women’s sports comes in attendance numbers. Both nationally and at Yale, fan presence at male sports events overshadows that at women’s events.

“I feel the athletics department treats both men’s and women’s sports very similarly as both are held in high regard on campus, [but] I do notice that there is a much higher turnout for men’s games as opposed to women’s,” men’s hockey forward Frankie DiChiara ’17 said. “Not always, and not in every sport, but that seems to be the case at times, especially with hockey.”

Yale athletics keeps public attendance records only for select spectator sports: baseball and softball, basketball, field hockey, football, hockey, lacrosse, soccer and volleyball. Senior Associate Athletic Director of Ticket Operations Jeremy Makins referred to this data when asked about attendance numbers. For sports that are not ticketed, these numbers are procured by both “headcounts and estimates,” he said.

For all teams that have a men’s and women’s equivalent, attendance numbers are heavily skewed towards the men’s events.

In the 2015–16 season, an average of 1,459 fans flocked to watch Yale men’s basketball home games. For women’s games, that figure was 208. In the 2014–15 lacrosse season, 907 fans attended men’s games on average, compared to 281 for women’s contests.

(Samuel Wang, Production & Design Editor)

Attendance records show that soccer is the sport with the most equivalent spectator numbers. Still, the men’s attendance average of 863 last fall was nearly twice that of women’s soccer, which averaged 480 fans per game.

The majority of students interviewed said they do not frequently attend Yale sporting events, but most noted that when they do, they tend to watch men’s teams.

Some student-athletes speculated that scheduled game times could influence the number of students present, as more fans may be available on Friday or Saturday nights, for example, than earlier in the afternoon. When teams that share a facility compete on the same day, coaches and athletic administrators must work together to determine the order of the games, Senior Associate Athletic Director Andy Dunn said.

In basketball and hockey, time conflicts have happened between zero and three times per year over the past six seasons. In each case — five times in basketball and six in hockey — the men have played in the evening and the women have played earlier.

The Yale athletic department charges non-students for tickets to both men’s and women’s hockey, in addition to football, both basketball teams and men’s lacrosse. Men’s hockey goalie Patrick Spano ’17 thought that money may be involved in the department’s scheduling decisions.

“[The athletic department] knows that the guys’ games are going to bring in more fans and so they want to put it on prime time,” Spano said. “If the girls’ teams were going to make more money [and get as many fans] they would put them in the 7 p.m. slot. Saturday at 2 p.m. most people are probably busy.”

Dunn said in an email to the News that game times are “strategically chosen” in order to maximize the ability for fans to attend games. But he added that while increased attendance does positively affect revenue, providing an “exceptional game-day atmosphere” for student-athletes was still the most important.

Meanwhile, in soccer and lacrosse — sports in which nearly every men’s home game is scheduled on the same day as a women’s home game — the team that plays earlier varies throughout the year. Still, these sports both feature an average attendance disparity of at least 44 percent during home games.

“There tends to be a tradition where girls and boys go to watch boys’ games, but the same is not to be said for women’s games,” women’s soccer midfielder Margaret Furlong ’18 said. “It just doesn’t seem to be a huge part of our campus’s culture to go all out for women’s games.”

A NATIONAL DILEMMA

That trend extends beyond Yale’s campus. Both non-athletes and student-athletes on multiple Yale teams highlighted that discrepancies in attendance are prevalent nationwide, not just at the Yale level.

Viewership for men’s and women’s NCAA Division I Basketball Tournaments proves as much. Just this year, 17.8 million viewers tuned in for the men’s final, while only 3.0 million watched the women’s contest.

Just before the finals, an op-ed written by Andrew Zimbalist in The New York Times highlighted the inequality in the NCAA basketball tournament — which rewards men’s teams’ conferences for their victories in the tournament but does not offer the same for women’s teams’ conferences.

“Over at the men’s tournament, the NCAA pays for success: Each game a team plays (not including the championship) earns the team’s conference roughly $260,000 this year plus $260,000 each of the five following years,” Zimbalist wrote. “By contrast, a win in the women’s tournament brings a reward of exactly zero dollars. That’s right, zero dollars.”

The fact that two of the most popular sports traditions in the U.S. — the Super Bowl and March Madness — focus primarily on male teams only furthers the gender gap in sports, women’s fencer Joanna Lew ’17 said.

Women’s golf head coach Chawwadee Rompothong ’00 also noted that two of the more popular American sports are football and baseball — both of which are male only.

“When it comes down to it, boys’ [and] men’s sports always felt like they’ve had a bigger presence since I was very young, and I think because of that fact we’ve just, in a way, been programmed to gravitate towards men’s sporting events,” women’s lacrosse goalie Sydney Marks ’18 said.

Multiple athletes said the reason for this may be simply biological. According to several students, the attention given to men’s sports is deep-rooted in society because male athletes tend to hold inherent physical advantages over females.

Even some female athletes interviewed said men’s sports can be more exciting to watch because of the athletes’ physical abilities.

“Men’s squash is faster-paced, and their points are longer,” women’s squash player Georgia Blatchford ’16 said. “Even as a woman, I would have to say that for the most part men’s squash is more exciting to watch. It can be frustrating, because as a woman I feel like I devote so much time and energy to my sport, but my physical capabilities are just biologically different than a man’s.”

An anonymous female athlete said the faster-paced play of men’s sports is due to men often being “fitter, stronger, faster” than their female counterparts.

Because of the faster pace, the athlete said, she generally prefers watching men’s sporting events. Spano agreed, noting that the different physical traits can make men’s sports more appealing than women’s sports.

“I can understand why men’s professional leagues are more popular in general,” Spano said. “Men’s sports are faster and more aggressive and that appeals to more sports fans.”

Yet others wholeheartedly disputed the notion that women’s sports should be considered on a different level than male sports.

Women’s hockey captain and forward Krista Yip-Chuck ’17 said despite “traditional notions” that lead to a larger fan presence at male sporting events, she finds that whenever she invites friends — many of whom are male Yale athletes — to her hockey games, they enjoy the experience and come to other games again later in the season.

“It is, I hope, obvious that it’s not a superior experience to watch men’s over women’s, and I hope that over time the fan bases will equilibrate,” Lew said. “It will take people noticing the inequality and acting on it, though. It’s culturally passed on that we watch men’s basketball, football, et cetera.”

For some students, the larger presence of men’s sports on campus is exactly what motivates them to attend games in the first place — creating a cycle wherein higher fan presence at some games motivates even more students to go to those games, furthering the imbalance.

Davi Lemos ’19 said he chooses to go to the sporting events with the highest attendance, because he enjoys feeling part of a crowd instead of just watching. That means he usually attends men’s sports, he added, because those teams bring more people to the stands.

“I think that at times it is much more fun to go watch boys you know play their sports because it is a much more social event,” Furlong said. “But it is sometimes difficult to raise the same attention for women’s sports.”

MORE WINS, MORE FANS

One way to break the trend, some students said, is to convince spectators that they have a chance to see an important win.

Multiple students interviewed said they make the decision to attend a game based on the team’s competitiveness; teams with a chance to win a championship tend to play more meaningful and exciting contests, making their attendance feel more worthwhile.

At an international level, for example, the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team has drawn fans to women’s soccer in record numbers because of its performance. On July 5, 2015, the USWNT defeated Japan, 5–2, for its third-ever Women’s World Cup title. Nearly 27 million viewers across the United States tuned in for the final, making it the most-watched soccer match, men’s or women’s, in U.S. history.

The viewership record likely had much to do with the difference in competitiveness between the U.S. women and their male counterparts: The U.S. men’s national team has not made the World Cup semifinal since 1930, the first-ever playing of the event. The women, meanwhile, have placed in the top three for all seven Women’s World Cups in history.

But at Yale over the past few years, the opposite trend has emerged in nearly every sport that draws a high number of fans.

(Robbie Short, Staff Photographer)

Perhaps more Yale teams this year than at any other time recently have earned national headlines for their success. Achievements this year include an NCAA basketball tournament berth and an upset victory in the first round; a national team championship in squash; and No. 1 rankings in lacrosse and crew, both heavyweight and lightweight.

But this year, all of these squads are men’s teams.

Assuming the Yale men’s lacrosse team makes the NCAA tournament this season — a near certainty, given the team’s current 10–1 record and No. 4 national ranking — Yale will have earned eight tournament appearances in men’s basketball, lacrosse and hockey over a span of the past five years.

By comparison, Yale’s women’s teams in those same three sports have earned zero NCAA tournament berths in the past eight years, one since 2004 and four since 1984.

Beckett pointed out several women’s teams that have achieved notable performances in the 21st century.

In the last five years ending in 2014–15, Yale women’s teams have won 11 Ivy League Championships, mostly in two sports: The Yale women’s tennis team won three conference titles from 2011–13, and the Yale volleyball team won five from 2010–14. Yale also added championships in field hockey, women’s golf and women’s squash, all in 2011.

Women’s squash also won a national championship in 2011, and female sailors were part of three national championships — coed fleet racing, coed team racing and women’s fleet racing — last spring.

“These ebbs and flows of female and male competitive success are consistent with the national landscape of college athletics,” Beckett said.

However, multiple students noted a perception that there has been a large discrepancy in competitiveness this year, perhaps because success has come from the more high-profile male teams on campus. Men’s lacrosse, basketball and hockey games are by far the most well-attended Yale sporting events, other than football.

“I think that people show up more to male’s sports because those male teams at Yale have seen more success,” said one member of the Yale women’s swimming and diving team.

Marks said that when teams are doing well relative to other teams in the country, their games are “more exciting” and draw more people to the stands. She noted that this is true for both women’s and men’s sports.

For example, the Yale volleyball team has been consistently at the top of the Ivy League for the past decade, with five consecutive conference titles between 2010 and 2014 and a third-place showing this past year.

Bulldog fans have responded to this success with more support than for any other women’s sport — in the 2015–16 season, an average of 528 fans were present at Yale’s 10 home volleyball games. By contrast, the Yale women’s basketball team — which placed sixth in the Ancient Eight this season after finishing third or fourth for the prior five years, and also plays its conference games in John J. Lee Amphitheater on weekend nights — brought an average of just 208 fans to its 15 home games this year.

A WORK IN PROGRESS

At Yale, some change has begun among both individual teams and student organizations with the goal of increasing attention toward women’s sports.

Recognizing the higher number of spectators at men’s squash matches, David Talbott, the head coach for both men’s and women’s squash, took action to try to level attendance numbers.

After he took over the women’s program in 2005, Talbott changed the structure of squash matches so that men and women now compete simultaneously. He said having both teams in the Brady Squash Center at the same time showcased women’s squash to spectators who normally only attend the men’s games.

“Attendance for male events has been predominantly stronger and that’s one way we have addressed it,” Talbott said. “When you play both at once you can get people to support both and realize [women’s squash] is not only just as exciting but the level is just as high. It’s just another way of putting the product out there in front of people.”

But Talbott recognized the unique circumstances of squash facilities and noted that the same cannot be done for all sports, many of which play at venues where only one game can be played at a time.

Beckett said the department has added additional staff recently to focus on social media and marketing efforts for all of Yale’s athletic programs. One of those hires this year was assistant athletic director for external operations Erica Egan, who now manages Yale athletics’ social media accounts.

Egan said she decides what to post on the accounts based on what teams are in-season and performing well, regardless of gender.

Still, the anonymous women’s team head coach cited difficulty getting support from the athletics administration. The coach said whenever the team wants its events to be promoted, program members have to be the ones actively seeking out publicity. The initiative does not originate from the athletics department, according to the coach.

“I should not have to constantly beg, plead, try to do things to make my team better and it shouldn’t just be that way,” the coach said. “If they have tiers or have to limit something for you they should tell you. You should know that ahead of time. You shouldn’t have to go in and keep asking and asking and keep getting turned down.”

The Whaling Crew, a student group on campus supporting Yale athletics, is also doing its part to improve attendance at women’s events. Former Whaling Crew president Matthew Sant-Miller ’17 highlighted as an example a cookout the group hosted on Old Campus this fall, meant to build excitement before the volleyball team’s home opener.

“In my personal opinion, the biggest challenge is the wide-scale societal bias towards male sports over female sports,” Sant-Miller said. “However, by continuing to enthusiastically support women’s sports, I hope that the Whaling Crew will help increase attendance and slowly start to erode this bias at Yale.”

The group has also hosted a tailgate for the Yale men’s and women’s soccer games against Harvard in the fall, and other tailgates for Yale baseball and softball doubleheaders last Saturday.

Multiple female athletes interviewed also said they themselves could do more by attending more women’s games and encouraging their friends to go as well.

“The next time a friend asks me to hang out and watch TV, I should switch on a women’s game and not a men’s,” Lew said. “I think that if we want the broader community to appreciate the seriousness and worth of women’s sports we need to lead the way. That being said, more money and publicity never hurt.”

Murn: increasing transparency

By Shuyu Song

Published on April 14, 2016

Zach Murn ’17, who served as the treasurer of the Freshman College Council and was a member of the Sophomore College Council, is running for the YCC finance director on a platform of increased transparency.

Finance director, as a member of the YCC executive board, is responsible for allocating the annual budget and securing funds. Traditionally, about two-thirds to three-fourths of the YCC budget goes to planning for Spring Fling. This year, Murn is running for the position uncontested. He is also the only rising senior seeking a board position.

“I thought that there haven’t been any seniors who have been on YCC for a while, so I thought it could be interesting to have a senior who could do this position,” Murn said. “Next year I’ll have much more time than a lot of juniors who would be applying for jobs and going to interviews.”

Murn added that there is no rule banning rising seniors from running for positions, though some assume that only rising juniors may run.

Murn runs mainly on the platform of pivoting the budget more toward career services and increasing transparency. Murn said that he would be willing to take some of the budget toward YCC’s own events and put it toward career events for students earlier in the school year.

Friends and colleagues attested to Murn’s personal quality and work ethic. “Highly intelligent,” “organized” and “on top of his game” were some of the words frequently used to describe him.

Leah Motzkin ’16, a former YCC presidential candidate who came to know Murn during her own campaign, said that it is extremely important for a finance director to always be attentive and keep track of the records. Adam Zucker ’17 also spoke to Murn’s accountability, adding that Murn’s past role as the treasurer of FCC gave him sufficient experience in financial matters. Michael Park ’17 said that Murn once reached out to the Yale College administration to extend opening hours of the Ezra Stiles dining hall during finals period, an anecdote he felt qualified Murn for the position.

“It is rare for someone to follow through with something you said in passing, and I think Murn has that admirable quality in him,” Park said.

Sapienza: experience and enthusiasm

By Rachel Treisman

Published on

Lauren Sapienza ’18 said she hopes to foster community and create new traditions while serving as Yale College Council events director. Running uncontested, Sapienza has already begun planning programming for next year.

“Yale is an incredible place, and one of the most incredible things we have here is each other,” Sapienza said. “As events director, I think I’ll have the opportunity to facilitate bonding and allow our campus and our friend groups to expand in different ways that I think can really enrich campus culture.”

Sapienza has served on the YCC, and on the Events Committee specifically, since her freshman year. She is currently the deputy events director, and she has worked under current Events Director Amour Alexandre ’17 — from whom Sapienza said she learned the value of resilience and creativity — to plan events such as the Yale/Harvard party in Commons.

Alexandre said she chose Sapienza as her deputy for her “attention to detail” and “resolve to give back to Yalies.” Sapienza’s leadership will further cement YCC Events’ legacy as more than just a party-planning group, but as a group that can impact students outside of the classroom, Alexandre added.

Sapienza said she is considering bringing events to campus such as TableTalk — a program already at several universities that facilitates conversation between different groups on campus. In order to further emphasize dance groups and entrepreneurial culture at Yale, Sapienza said she also hopes to bring a “So You Think Yale Can Dance” competition and a Shark Tank-themed event to campus.

“TableTalk would give students from various groups an opportunity to interact with one another, which has become so uncommon given our busy, heavily ‘Gcal-ed’ lives,” Events Committee member Tyler Bleuel ’19 said. “Events director is a huge role, and I know Lauren will do an amazing job.”

Sapienza added that she hopes to take advantage of the resources available to the YCC, such as the ability to bring in judges and real-world prizes for competitions, as well as more Chick-fil-A study breaks.

Close friend Mollie Johnson ’18 said that Sapienza’s dedication to the YCC and her ability to come up with and execute creative ideas will serve her well as events director.

“Lauren is the best person for the job, and I have no doubts about her competency or passion to put on amazing events for Yale,” Alexandre said. “Every events director has a certain ‘flavor,’ and I can’t wait to see hers next year.”

Wilson: a YCC outsider

By Daniela Brighenti

Published on

At 5 a.m. a few days per week, Zach Wilson ’18 might be found trekking across campus, clad in his army uniform. The ROTC flight commander and double-STEM major has labeled himself the “outsider candidate” in his race against three other students for Yale College Council vice president.

Wilson decided to run for vice president primarily because of the racial discussions that arose on campus last semester. He said after having long discussions with other Yale students and attending various rallies and town hall meetings, he was inspired to bring forth the kind of change Yale students seek. Although Wilson has no previous experience on YCC or his residential college council, he said that he will be “the candidate for the people” and will use his experiences outside of YCC to push for change.

“I know I’m going to face a lot of doubt in a sense from coming from the outside and not being in the loop of YCC,” Wilson said. “I’ve never been to a YCC meeting. But I know my platform, I know what I want to do and that is what I plan on doing.”

As an astrophysics and applied math double-major, Wilson’s platform focuses in part on underlying issues in the STEM fields, such as grade transparency, midterm and end of term course evaluation reforms and an “investigation” into the quality of instructors in STEM departments.

Wilson said he singled out the STEM fields in his written platform because of his experience in those disciplines, but that the suggested reforms are something he would like to see expand to all Yale departments.

Other points in Wilson’s platform include increasing transparency between students and the administration, as well as financial aid reforms: Wilson proposes reducing and eliminating the student income contribution and reforming work-study hours, both of which would be a continuation of current YCC agendas.

Though Wilson has no previous experience in the YCC, he cited his experience as student council president in high school, as well as leadership in ROTC and other student organizations, as qualifications for the position.

Those close to Wilson said his personality and work ethic will make him a good leader.

“Zach is an incredibly diligent person and has a strong sense of follow-through,” Wilson’s campaign manager Sweyn Venderbush ’18 said. “Whether it’s waking up at 5 a.m. for ROTC twice a week or managing his class work and extracurriculars, he never drops an assignment.”

Matthew Chisholm ’18, who has been roommates with Wilson since their freshman year, said even before deciding to run for vice president, Wilson had always cared about listening to other students’ experiences. That quality will make his platform one catered towards the students’ needs, Chisholm said.

“It’s been very local in the sense that me and my campaign manager are doing a lot of the things, and I built my own platforms, own website,” Wilson said. “I have asked for input from other people, ‘Hey, what is something you’d like to see change?’ and absorbing that and developing policies, that’s where my platform came from.”

Sullivan: a new approach to YCC

By Jiahui Hu

Published on

If elected vice president of the Yale College Council, Kevin Sullivan ’18 would help lead an organization he considers both great and terrible.

Sullivan, who previously served as vice president of the Sophomore Class Council and Morse College representative, said he understands the shortcomings of the YCC: its top-down hierarchy and general failure to listen to students. While on SoCo, Sullivan said executive leadership of YCC declined to support the budget for the Sophomore Brunch, a new yearly tradition introduced by him and Sarah Armstrong ’18, a YCC presidential candidate. He added that as a Morse College representative, he struggled to propose ideas he solicited from his fellow Yalies to executive leadership, which set the agendas for all meetings.

“The YCC shouldn’t think of itself as a student government,” Sullivan said. “We should think of it as a student council and advocacy group that supports Yalies and the individuals who need it. Though I think that it is incomplete and flawed, I really think it can do much good.”

During the past year, Sullivan served as the director of the YCC’s dining task force. In this position, he analyzed student responses to questions about dining services on the YCC’s fall survey. He then presented recommendations — such as less expensive options for on-campus meal plans, extended lunch hours and late-night meal-plan options — to the administration.

The experience showed Sullivan that reforms to University policy require persistent pressure from students. If elected vice president, Sullivan said he understands that he must support momentum on student projects that began this past year, such as the implementation of gender neutral housing, reforms to student mental health services and the elimination of the student income contribution.

Sullivan, a New Haven native and history major, said YCC’s potential to help implement these projects motivated him to run for vice president.

“We shouldn’t have a bunch of ideas that we think might go over well,” Sullivan said. “I think there really does need to be a genuine way that [YCC] relates to the student body. Every Yale student has an opinion and everyone has a say. At the end of the day, we are an advocacy body.”

Victoria Loo ’18, who is in Morse College with Sullivan, said she will vote for him because of his experience with the YCC.

“He’s done an incredible amount of work for both YCC as a Morse Representative and for SoCo,” Loo said. “He knows how the system works and how to best push for reform, which I think is one of YCC’s biggest challenges.”

Patiño: for one Yale

by Monica Wang

Published on

Luis Patiño III ’18 is the third in his family to be baptized with the name, and he is proud of the heritage that it represents. The Yale College Council Vice Presidential candidate said he hopes to use his family’s history as motivation to serve his fellow Yale students.

Patiño’s grandfather — the original Luis Patiño — began shining shoes at the age of seven and was later drafted into World War II; Patiño’s father was raised in an impoverished neighborhood in El Paso, Texas. On his campaign website, Patiño notes that the “III” numeral in his name reminds him of the work and struggle of the generations that preceded him, and empowers him to raise his voice on behalf of the entire Yale community.

Patiño told the News that because the vice president’s term is limited, his priority is to put in place formal mechanisms for the YCC to listen to student voices. This would allow the YCC to be truly representative of the student body in the long run, he said.

“The two main things that I think the YCC should do is to empower the student voice and enhance the Yale experience,” Patiño said. “I hope to set up institutionalized ways for the student body to bring their concerns to the YCC and develop a resolution process so that we can be more responsive to campus issues in real time.”

He pointed to his proposal for a “One Yale” project — in which the YCC would help set up self-governing structures for the cultural centers and Greek life organizations, as well as establish clear mechanisms for voicing concerns in both communities — as an example of how to institutionalize the reporting and resolution processes.

This way, Patiño said, the YCC would be able to collect real-time student feedback more efficiently and design long-term projects based on student concerns.

“What sets me apart [from other candidates] is that for me, the idea of a low-income, minority student isn’t a nebulous concept. I am on 95 percent financial aid, I come from an immigrant family and I am able to empathize,” Patiño said. “I really believe that empathy is an important quality in a representative of the student body and also the first step to solving these problems.”

Supporters interviewed expressed their firm belief in Patiño’s candidacy.

Fish Stark ’17, a friend of Patiño who has worked with him in various campaigns and other capacities, said Patiño brings “passion and commitment to whatever he does.” He is someone who will volunteer to do the hard work, Stark added.

“He’s a workhorse, not a showhorse, and that’s something we can use a lot more on the YCC,” Stark said.

Bowman: a YCC for all

by Qi Xu

Published on

After serving as a representative for Saybrook on the Yale College Council, the treasurer for the Freshman Class Council and a member of two University committees including the Yale College Standing Committee on University Expansion, Christopher Bowman ’18 said his connections to student government and unique background knowledge on the new residential colleges set him apart from the other three candidates running for YCC vice president.

Bowman said his priority is to raise the standard of the YCC by improving its accessibility, transparency and communication with students. Bowman said he hopes to review reinstatement policies, create a task force to review existing reporting mechanisms for sexual misconduct and tackle the issue of eliminating the student income contribution. Academically, Bowman said he will push for a later registration deadline for converting classes from Credit/D/Fail to a letter grade.

“Through serving on the steering committee for the new residential colleges, I’ve been able to see firsthand the issues that are facing Yale as it prepares for an influx of additional students,” Bowman said. “As vice president, I would have the unique background knowledge to create policies that would ensure the continued success of Yale College despite the huge changes that are on the way.”

Bowman told the News that the current YCC has a done good job in terms of student advocacy but has lost touch with students, as many Yalies are unaware of the YCC’s work.

The problem boils down to communication and outreach, he said. As a result, his goal is to bring back the YCC’s high standard, Bowman said.

Bowman outlined three main ways to achieve this goal. First, he said he will ensure YCC representatives from different colleges attend their respective college council meetings. Second, to boost greater communication between the YCC and the student body, Bowman said he will send out monthly emails to keep students updated about the YCC’s progress, and publish a report on its projects at the end of each semester.

Third, Bowman said he will push for a new position on the YCC’s executive board dedicated exclusively to connecting with students: the director of student outreach. Bowman said that the YCC’s student life director and vice president are currently the two primary contacts for outreach, but the former oversees many projects and the latter is responsible for a significant amount of advocacy, leaving the representatives unable to focus on connecting with every student.

During his term on the YCC last fall, Bowman spearheaded several projects, including one on seminar accessibility for sophomores, which culminated in a 29-page report now available on the YCC’s website. Bowman said he would continue addressing this issue if elected vice president.

Sydney Wade ’18, who has worked with Bowman on the YCC, said Bowman makes a perfect candidate because he will hold the YCC accountable for every student. Wade added that unlike other candidates who voiced similar goals, Bowman is not putting on a show just for the campaign but is voicing what he believes all the time.

Wade said when Bowman served as a treasurer for the FCC, he regularly updated the team on how much it has and how to boost its budget.

“[Bowman] knows how to get stuff done. He knows how to put his heart and soul into pushing for policy reforms,” Wade said.

Matt Guido ’19, who served on the YCC’s task force on new residential colleges and has worked with Bowman in the past, said a vice president should be vocal during council meetings and Bowman would be the best fit. Guido recalled that during meetings, Bowman always engaged with others’ ideas and asked pointed questions.