Sam's online data stream

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Need a break? 
Visit the barrito carts tonight between 10 and 11PM in the main courtyard.
Made to order -- your choice ingredients.
My treat!

See you soon!
Master Henrich

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Dear Yale College Students:

Last week, President Levin’s Advisory Committee on Campus Climate was here on campus to meet with students, faculty and staff as part of the committee’s fact-finding efforts. I’m pleased to report that the committee met with over 70 individuals, in both group and individual meetings, representing a broad spectrum of the Yale community. Meeting participants included YCC and GPSS representatives, frocos and other peer counselors, residential college deans and masters, international students. post-docs, members of the Women’s Center board, leaders of fraternities and sororities, athletes and coaches, the Yale Police Department, and YCDO staff, among others.

To guide each discussion, the committee developed the following questions:

1. What are the problems, if any, as you see them? What works well? What is not working?
2. Where does the campus culture not measure up?
3. Do you believe that people report what they perceive to be sexual harassment or misconduct when it occurs? If not, why not?
4. Do you believe that people have information and resources available to them about what to do if they encounter sexual harassment, violence or misconduct?
5. What should Yale be doing that is isn’t? What should Yale continue to do more – or do more of?

The committee plans to continue their discussions over the summer, with meetings for current students and recent graduates envisioned for Boston, New York, Washington, DC, Chicago, San Francisco, and perhaps other locations. Details of these events will be emailed as they become available in the next few months. The committee hopes to finish its work and make its recommendations to President Levin expeditiously.

Many students also attended the dinners held by the Women’s Center April 11-15. I’m including the Women’s Center report of those meetings as an attachment here, and I’m also pasting it into the text after my signature.

To follow up on all these useful and informative exchanges, we would like to take advantage of the time available to us before exams to continue the conversation here in New Haven. Starting today, Wednesday, April 27, and running through Friday, April 29, several of my colleagues and I will be visiting residential college dining halls for informal discussions about campus climate over a meal with you and your classmates.

Your residential college master will soon be circulating a schedule for these “listening events.” I hope that many of you will be able to join us as we continue our efforts to ensure that Yale is a safe and civil environment for all.

Yours truly,

Dean Mary Miller

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Report from the Women’s Center: 

Dear Members of the Yale College Community,

Last week, the Women’s Center held a series of conversations about sexual violence, harassment, and misconduct at Yale.  Over 200 people attended at least one of the dinners.  With so many participants, there were a variety of perspectives and ideas, but the core recommendations were emphatically shared.  We’ve summarized the key points below.  If you are interested in working with us on implementing any of these suggestions, please write to us at womens.center@yale.edu.  We are also happy to share more detailed notes from the dinners.

We’d like to thank Dean Mary Miller and Provost Peter Salovey for their support of our own listening project, and their willingness to hear what we have to say.  We appreciate the work they and others are already doing on these issues, and feel confident they will continue to move forward.  Some of the ideas that emerged will require administrative initiative and support; others demand student engagement and effort; others speak to the faculty and staff.  This can only work as a true community project.

Working together, we need to:

*   expand prevention and education. Freshman Orientation isn’t enough.
*   Find places to add more mandatory formal education: in summer materials for prefrosh; through sophomore, junior, senior orientations; at semester registration meetings; as part of student organizations; in order to register a party; for Master’s aides; etc.
*   Teach conceptual frames, bystander intervention skills, and resources for response.  Create safer, more respectful campus norms.
*   Develop accessible advanced educational options for people who want or need more.  Market these options well—and take them to where we, the students, are.
*   Create resources through professional educators and student peer educator programs.  Pay attention to the needs of specific communities: students of color, LGBTQ students, International students, faith communities, etc.
*   make “zero tolerance” real.  Work on transparency, accountability, speed.
*   Share as much information as possible about disciplinary proceedings and outcomes.  Be creative: give hypotheticals, composite narratives, etc.
*   Impose real penalties.  Some crimes deserve expulsion.
*   Make in-progress work visible, so that we know administrators are taking action.
*   Make administrative responses to sexual misconduct faster and more forceful.
*   Train everyone—Masters, Deans, faculty, staff—so that people know what to do in cases of sexual misconduct, or at least where to go when they don’t.  Make that training smart, relevant, and engaging.  Get beyond sympathetic inaction.
*   Gather real data on campus incidence of sexual violence and harassment.  Measure attitudes, knowledge of resources, and people’s confidence in their own capacity to respond.  Survey the campus every year.  Make the data public.  Track the efficacy of our work.
*   improve communication about existing resources – make them more accessible, better understood.  Fix their limitations.
*   Fix the misperceptions about SHARE: tell us that they offer more than just counseling.  Make sure SHARE has all it needs—staff, space, budget, etc.
*   Ensure that everyone knows the basic legal and disciplinary options.
*   Create informative webpages explaining options and resources.  Make them easy to find, navigate and understand.
*   Develop a serious publicity campaign for the new University-Wide Committee.  People are skeptical—make sure we all understand the strengths of the new Committee.
*   build a more positive, limit-respecting sexual culture on campus.
*   Create more student initiatives (administrator supported or otherwise) on sexuality and sexual practices on campus.  Help people develop ways to think and talk about what they do or don’t want.
*   Make space for a diversity of ethical sexual practices including abstinence, religious or otherwise.
*   Help foster safer options so that students don’t feel pressed into risky activities or behaviors.
*   Reduce the role of alcohol in campus sexual culture.

Some of these suggestions will be easy to implement; others will take a great deal of careful planning and creative effort.  But Yale is an amazing place. Working together, we can make it even better. Together, we can build a campus culture that is safer, healthier, and more equitable for all.

Yours,
The 2010-11 Women’s Center Board
Sally Walstrom '12, Natalia Thompson '13, Diana Ofosu '12, Diana Saverin '13, Alexsis Johnson '12, Laura Blake '12, Elizabeth Deutsch '11

The 2011-12 Women’s Center Board
Alexsis Johnson '12, Esi Hutchful '12, Anjali Jotwani '13, Lily Wang '13, Kate Huh '14, Rebecca Suldan '13, Liane Membis '12, Jazzmin Estebane '13

Message attachments

To open an attachment, click on the link. If you have problems opening an attachment, try copying the link and pasting it into your web browser.

• Women's Center Report:  https://light.its.yale.edu/messages/attachments/w3_65601_An_update_from_the_Women_s_Center.pdf

http://www.nps.gov/glac/photosmultimedia/webcams.htm

This time, some charts about sex. OK Cupid is a dating site which has a blog called 'OK Trends.' I have no use for the dating site itself (yay!) but the blog is fascinating for the trends and patterns that get reported from giant troves of data! Here's one of many in the recent post.

http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/10-charts-about-sex/

Lagging behind a bit, huh?

1.) My loan holder needs to know when I: 
 A. Change my name, address or phone number
 B. Change my enrollment status; i.e., withdraw or drop below half-time attendance, transfer to a new school or graduate
 C. Have new and better employment
 D. Both A and B

2.) If I am having difficulty making my student loan payments, I should contact my loan holder to: 
 A. Have them begin default procedures because there are no other options
 B. Discuss my need for a better paying job, maybe they have an opening
 C. Find out about postponing my payment requirements with a forbearance or deferment
 D. None of the above

3.) If my loan is sold to another holder: 
 A. My repayment period may be extended
 B. My new holder will notify me about the sale
 C. Terms and Conditions of my loans will change
 D. I have no legal commitment to repay this loan

4.) If I am having difficulty making my student loan payments, I should: 
 A. Contact my loan holder to discuss postponing payments with a forbearance
 B. Contact my loan holder to begin default procedures
 C. Contact my loan holder to discuss postponing payments with a deferment
 D. A and C above

Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, he who has the gift of invention is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance a paternal love of your own child has led you to say what is not the fact; for this invention of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. You have found a specific, not for memory but for reminiscence, and you give your disciples only the pretence of wisdom; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome, having the reputation of knowledge without the reality.”