Across the country, pollsters have attempted to gauge support for the retired policy among Americans. Compared to polls from the Associated Press, Pew and PBS, which report that 60 percent of respondents favored affirmative action, the 360 respondents to the News’ anonymous survey expressed slightly higher levels of support, with 67 percent indicating their support as a six or higher out of ten (ten being strong support). 

The survey further suggests that staff and legacy students support race-conscious admissions models by the highest margin, compared to undergraduate and graduate students. Fifty-four percent of respondents rated their support for affirmative action as an eight or above out of ten, and 20 percent of respondents rated their support as a two out of ten or below. 

Thirty-seven students who responded to the survey self-identified as legacies; according to official University figures, about 181 members of the class of 2027 are legacy students, or 11 percent. Overall, about 538 students in the classes of 2024, 2025 and 2026 are legacies, amounting to more than 700 legacy students in Yale College alone.  

Staff and legacy students who responded to the survey were disproportionately white — 72 and 75 percent, respectively, compared to 47 percent of the whole sample — while legacy students were also disproportionately wealthy. Sixty-eight percent of self-identified legacy students reported an annual household income greater than $200,000, compared to 32 percent of the whole sample.

Crucially, the specific effects that the Court’s June ruling will have on admissions approaches are unclear, as a July analysis by the News listed six major questions about changing admissions models that remain unanswered. Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid Jeremiah Quinlan has committed to announcing changes to the Yale College admissions process in the coming months; meanwhile, the role of standardized test scores and legacy status in admissions is growing increasingly controversial, in large part because of the disproportional wealth and whiteness of legacy pools. 

Here are five graphs summarizing the survey’s findings. 

Support for affirmative action:

The results of the survey show that across all groups — legacy students, non-legacy students, staff and faculty — the majority support affirmative action, with staff and legacy students supporting the policy by the highest margin. Fifty-four percent of respondents rated their support for affirmative action as an eight or above out of ten, and 20 percent of respondents rated their support as a two out of ten or below. 

Support for use of race in college admissions

The survey also asked respondents to rate their support for the consideration of race in college admissions. The results were similar to those of the previous question asking about support for affirmative action, with 55 percent rating their support as eight or above, and 67 percent as a six or higher. Faculty and legacy students also most strongly supported the use of race in admissions.

Support for use of race in admissions by race

When segmented by respondents’ racial identity, results show similarly broad support for race-conscious admissions across racial groups. 

Support was strongest among Black and African American respondents, 87 percent of whom rated their support as eight or higher. Support was lowest among Asian respondents, as 52 percent rated their support for race in admissions as a four or below. 

Although the survey included more racial and ethnic categories than displayed here, this chart reflects responses from the racial groups that the University — and most employers — uses in its reports. 

Support for affirmative action by income

Forty-five percent of respondents with a self-reported household income of $30,000 or less rated their support for the use of the policy as an eight or above, as did 52 percent of those with a household income of $200,000 or more. 

Heatmap of beliefs about admissions factors

Respondents also shared opinions on what factors admissions officers should weigh when deciding on an applicant’s future — and how heavily. For a set of potential components — gender, socioeconomic bracket, legacy status and athletic ability, among others — survey takers identified whether they felt that attribute constitutes a major or minor factor or should not receive consideration at all. 

In the chart below, boxes are classified based on the median of the responses for the associated sample. 

Across political groups, most agreed that socioeconomic status should be a major factor in college admissions. All groups also agreed that admissions officers should consider first-generation status and community service history, although their opinions varied regarding the importance of these factors. 

All groups except for those who described their political affiliation as right-leaning opposed the consideration of legacy status. Respondents broke along political lines when it came to the use of race and ethnicity in admissions, with only those on the left supporting its consideration as a minor factor and those on the center and right opposing its consideration. 

Nov. 1 marks the due date for early applications to the Yale College class of 2028, the first undergraduate application cycle post-affirmative action.

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Javier Lavado, a former employee of Pizza House, alleges that on Feb. 25, he was verbally and physically assaulted by his manager, Luis Nagera. Lavado alleges that an intoxicated Nagera called him homophobic slurs and shoved him after the two disagreed about the proper way to put cheese on a pizza. After their altercation, Lavado said he called the pizzeria owner for help but received none, as Lavado does not speak English and had difficulty explaining the situation. He then called the police, who offered no assistance either.

“I told the police officer that I called him because I need [your] support, and I need your protection, and I need you to do something,” said Lavado, as translated by ULA co-founder John Lugo. “But the police officer told me not to tell him how to do his job, and then told me that nothing happened here … I left my country because I was receiving threats and hate [for being] gay, and now here I am suffering the same.”

A few days later, Lavado got a call from Pizza House informing him that he had been fired.

Neither Pizza House management nor Nagera responded to requests for comment. 

Lavado then called ULA, which he has been a member of since he came to the U.S. from Peru in 2020. The group decided to write a letter to the owner of Pizza House, detailing the abuse that Lavado had suffered at the hands of Nagera. Lugo told the News that he hoped to convince the owner to begin a mediation process between Lavado and Nagera, hoping to get Lavado his job back. 

When they attempted to deliver the letter to the owner of Pizza House, Peter Papadopoulos, on March 9, ULA said that Papadopoulos refused to meet with them and accused Lavado of trespassing.

Lugo also told the News that they had received previous complaints from workers regarding Nagera’s behavior, especially similar stories of Nagera acting aggressively while intoxicated. Unlike previous reports, Lugo said that Lavado’s was the first incident where police were involved and where an employee was fired immediately.

“If the manager doesn’t like somebody, he fires them or puts so much pressure and harassment on them that they leave,” Lugo said. “We feel like this is not a healthy place to work, so we sent a press release with some demands.” 

Lugo also said that ULA sent a complaint to NHPD for not arresting Nagera for his verbal and physical harassment of Lavado when Lavado called them to the scene. Lugo says this complaint was submitted last week. 

Captain Rose J. Dell, media liaison and public information officer for NHPD, told the News that he was unable to find anything matching Lavado’s account of the original incident or Lugo’s complaint regarding the police’s response. 

ULA’s boycott of Pizza House began about three weeks ago. ULA is asking that patrons boycott Pizza House until Nagera is fired and until Lavado receives compensation from Pizza House.

“It has been a positive response from the customers,” Lugo said. “We tried to advocate with the customers that they have the power to say something about this kind of injustice. In many of the places downtown, in the kitchens they are immigrant workers. They’re mistreated all the time … it’s time to say no to this kind of behavior. They should treat their workers as human beings, not as slaves.”

Unlike Lavado, many of the workers who have come to ULA with workplace complaints are undocumented, according to Lugo, and so they fear losing their job or facing deportation by reporting abuse to the police. 

Lugo added that ULA is currently working with the city government to try to design better protections for workers. 

Pizza House is located at 89 Howe St.

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Under the newly-announced collaboration, the Tobin Center will work with New Haven Public Schools to study different metrics of educational performance, the Department of Energy and Environment Protection Commissioner to identify ways to better fight climate change and strengthen Medicaid coverage in the state. 

“Here in Connecticut, we are fortunate to have leading academic researchers like those at Yale’s Tobin Center who we can partner with to ensure that the policies we are implementing are efficient, methodical, and produce the best results for the residents of our state,” Governor Lamont said. “I appreciate their willingness to partner with us, and academics at the state’s other great universities, on these efforts.”

The announcement last week came on the heels of Yellen’s visit to Yale last week as part of her national tour to discuss President Joe Bidens’s “Investing in America” agenda. 

Lamont announced that senior members of his administration — including Chief of Staff Jonathan Dach, Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Commissioner Katie Dykes and Office of Early Childhood Commissioner Beth By — and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro met with Yellen at Yale University’s Tobin Center for Economic Policy to discuss Biden’s plan  for expanding economic opportunity and boosting productive capacity in Connecticut.

Yellen also highlighted the latest investments that states will receive from the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act. These investments, according to Yellen, are aimed at building a clean energy economy, rebuilding crumbling infrastructure, strengthening supply chains, spurring manufacturing and creating well-paying jobs across the United States. 

According to the U.S. Treasury Department, states play a critical role in implementing these new investments and research universities are integral to deploying skills and talent in support of essential public policy goals. 

To further these efforts, the Lamont administration and the Tobin Center announced a series of new steps that respond to Secretary Yellen’s call for states to implement inclusive and green policies and for academic economists to utilize their skills in support of state efforts.

“I am grateful to Secretary Yellen for providing thoughtful perspectives regarding the federal administration’s economic priorities in the context of the Yale Tobin Center’s research and policy work,” University President Peter Salovey said. “By convening leaders such as Secretary Yellen and working collaboratively with faculty members across the university, the Tobin Center is helping to set the national agenda and informing domestic public policy through evidence-based research.”

Local officials hope that the collaboration with the Tobin Center will empower them to improve their education policy through scientifically driven findings. According to Elicker, increasing access to high-quality childcare and early education will have significant impacts not just on students and their outcomes but will also free parents to participate in the workforce, thereby boosting the New Haven economy. 

New Haven Public Schools’ Director of Communications and Marketing Justin Harmon, echoed Elicker’s sentiments, hoping that the research of the Tobin Center would allow access to education to be improved, benefiting both students and their parents. 

“We know based on the experiences of our families that high-quality childcare and early childhood education are essential to parents’ full participation in the workforce, as well as to the wellbeing of our children,” Harmon told the News. “We are pleased to partner with the Tobin Center to provide longitudinal data on school choice outcomes that can contribute to a formal assessment of those linkages.”

The Tobin Center is located at 87 Trumbull St. 

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Pathways to Wellness, which first launched its online mental health services in 2020, plans to open its first brick-and-mortar site on March 25. The new wellness center is the result of a collaboration between Dr. Natasha Wright and Denise Newton, two clinical social workers based in Hamden. 

Wright and Newton came together to develop a joint practice after personally experiencing difficulty in accessing mental health care as women of color themselves. They hope to expand access to care and provide spaces for women to feel comfortable and safe in utilizing mental health services such as individual therapy, yoga, meditation, expressive therapies and more. 

“Black women face significant disparities in mental health care,” Wright said. “One is access to care and access has several prongs where it is either unable to find a provider or access also being insurance issues. And then the third problem with that would be hours and availability of those said providers.”

By opening a physical site, Pathways to Wellness hopes that it will be able to better serve patients and encourage others to seek their services. With a focus on holistic and integrative care such as expressive and adventure therapies to complement more traditional mental health care programs, providers at Pathways to Wellness aim to provide uniquely tailored services to women. 

Pathways to Wellness planned to launch the women’s center when they were first founded three years ago, but the COVID-19 pandemic stalled these efforts. However, with clinical mental health services in high demand by women, Pathways to Wellness provided virtual clinical services throughout the pandemic to fill the need.

“At the end of last year, we were prompted to then begin to expand our services and begin to look at a brick and mortar home and location” Wright said. “We’re putting it in the greater New Haven area …which then allows us to offer additional services. So now we can roll out the full wellness component of Pathways to Wellness.” 

To start Pathways, Wright said she and her team had to overcome many social barriers. Wright described issues like distrust of the medical system and stigmas surrounding therapy in the communities they hope to serve. However, Wright said that her team has been able to break through these barriers because of the need for their services.

Wright also said that Pathways has received some pushback for focusing specifically on extending care to Black women, with some saying that it was “too niche.” While Wright said that it is niche, she maintained that it is necessary. There is a need for spaces designed to support the underserved, marginalized and often unseen, according to Wright.

Kenyatta Hayes, a wellness practitioner at Pathways, said that another kind of challenge that the center addresses is the many racial biases baked into modern medical practice and countering associated assumptions. 

“There’s research studies, but it’s sort of not fully acknowledged in the forefront,” Hayes said. “If just by changing the race on an index changes the whole treatment plan. That’s insane … But these are things that have just been in place for years that no one second guesses.”

Before working at Pathways, Hayes worked and grew up near Greenwich, where many of her clients did not look like her. Hayes wanted to do more to serve Black women, ultimately leading her to Pathways. 

For Hayes, this work has allowed her to help her clients, but also help herself.

“I’ve wanted to work with Black women and serve people that look like me, like take care of myself,” Hayes said. “Not only am I feeding my soul. I am healing a lot of trauma that has sat with me. I’m helping women. This is going to help their families. So it doesn’t end with me.” 

Pathways’ director of programming D’Amira Kendricks echoed the emphasis on providing value and support to the community, hoping that those who enter the center will feel that it is a space meant for them.

Kendricks also hopes that Pathway will be able to offer a new perspective on therapy and wellness that is grounded in shared experiences and will benefit their clients and other practitioners in the industry.

“I feel like being Black women, we understand what it feels like on the receiving side of the disparity of care,” Kendricks said. “That is something that we all can relate to on so many levels … It’s not a secret. We all know that the systems in place were not designed with us in mind. So we’re here to change that narrative.” 

Pathways to Wellness is located at 60 Connolly Parkway in Hamden.

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In order to make the day special for local lovers, stores surveyed customers, began accepting preorders, coordinated flower production with local flower farms and shifted their business models to keep up with the demand. 

BLOOM, a multi-purpose community space that also houses a flower shop, became the first business in New Haven to deliver flowers via DoorDash a few weeks ago after owner and founder Alisha Crutchfield saw that the platform also delivers plants. According to Crutchfield, because Valentine’s Day fell on a weekday, not everyone could make it to the store in person. However, DoorDash allowed BLOOM to mitigate that challenge and access a larger market. 

“Valentine’s Day was obviously our biggest day of the year to date since we opened,” Crutchfield said. “We were able to serve over 200 people that day. Yeah, it was out of this world.”

Crutchfield also credited BLOOM’s partnerships with local flower farms and distributors for its success during the Valentine’s season. She said that leading up to and on Valentine’s Day, she and her team were in contact with farms to make sure the store was fully stocked with roses and other products popular during the holiday. 

Crutchfield told the News about how much effort goes into creating a single bouquet, describing the process of personalizing the colors and aromas of arrangements. She added that Valentine’s Day was special for BLOOM because it allowed the shop to showcase its “unique and intentional designs.”

At Mae Flower and Gift Shop, owner Nethia Joyner estimated that Valentine’s Day likely accounts for nearly 10 percent of the store’s annual business, although Mother’s Day is its busiest holiday overall. She added that this season brought a strong return in sales after a COVID-19 pandemic-induced lull. 

Although traffic does increase around Valentine’s Day, Joyner said that the business was able to keep up with the increased demand thanks to her team’s use of social media and online ordering to assess interest for certain products. 

“During that time, we normally put out flyers and brochures, and send little things out on like Instagram [and] Facebook, and so we get a feel for what the people like,” Joyner said. “Most people said they want to shower their significant other with flowers and candy and teddy bears and love and, you know, different chocolates and stuff like that.”

Flower shops like BLOOM and Mae Flower rely on local flower farms and — especially during the winter — large flower wholesalers to keep their shelves stocked during the season. 

According to Simple Life Flower Farm owner Ashley Gulick, winter poses a significant challenge for local farmers, as most flowers cannot survive the cold. Unless she receives special orders, Gulick told the News that her farm typically takes the winter off and starts growing again around Easter, ramping up to Mother’s Day.

“Busy holidays filled with lots and lots of orders can certainly be stressful, but I put on some good music and chip away one order at a time,” Gulick wrote in an email to the News. “It is all worth it when you see the look on your customers face when they pick up the arrangement you created for them! The amount of pride that comes from growing your own flowers and being able to share them with others is indescribable!”

Janet Kramka, the owner of the flower farm Backyard Blooms, also told the News about the dynamics of operating as a smaller farm within the flower industry. According to Kramka, the pandemic helped drive business to local farms after wholesalers faced restrictions on importing flowers from Ecuador or Colombia, which account for nearly 70 percent of cut flowers sold in the US. 

Kramka said that even as supply chain issues dissipated, many of the customers she had gained during the pandemic continued buying locally after noticing the difference in quality provided by local farms. Additionally, since the pandemic, some wholesalers have also begun buying a portion of their flowers locally, according to Kramka.

Despite these recent gains, Kramka said that her product selection is still impacted and curtailed by the power of flower importers. To keep up with the competition, Kramka said that she has decided to focus on selling flowers that are difficult for wholesalers to import.

“For example, dahlias are very popular but are too fragile to import,” Kramka wrote in an email to the News. “The only way a florist or floral designer can source them is to buy local. So rather than compete with the thousands of roses and carnations imported from South America, I’m going to focus on dahlias, or rare varieties of common flowers, like tulips.”

Kramka said that the Connecticut Flower Collective, which also supplies BLOOM, has also helped her compete with wholesalers. The collective is a group of farmers who have banded together to sell their flowers in order to offer wholesale prices to their customers. 

Despite these strategies, the climate in New England still shuts Kramka out of the Valentine’s Day flower market.

“We grow flowers sustainably and in rhythm with the seasons, so our blooms are only available from May to October,” Kramka said. “Therefore, Valentine’s Day isn’t something my little farm can supply. So for now, we fully surrender that holiday to the large wholesale suppliers.”

BLOOM is located at 794 Edgewood Avenue.

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The Lab at ConnCORP, an outgrowth of the Connecticut Center for Arts and Technology, is an incubator that hopes to revitalize the Newhallville neighborhood and New Haven by improving access to knowledge and capital for local minority-owned businesses. In an attempt to avoid gentrification, the incubator hopes to uplift those within the community rather than inject outside capital.  

According to KeyBank’s regional corporate responsibility officer Analisha Michanczyk, it was this focus on uplifting businesses and creating opportunities for low and moderate income underserved populations in Newhallville that caught the KeyBank foundation’s attention. According to the executive director of ConnCORP Aya Swanson, the grant will be given over a five year period to ensure that the incubator can continue running for the next few years. 

“Whatever we do, it’s to better the businesses in this space and to better those in the surrounding community,” Swanson said. “Newhallville is underserved and underdeveloped, and it’s one of the most poverty stricken areas in Connecticut. Our goal through entrepreneurship is to alleviate that poverty. And I think it works and the reason we can get the money directly to people is because A, they trust us, and B, we’re not trying to put barriers between them and the money.”

The incubator is currently home to 11 businesses, 9 of which are Black-owned. Partnering with Quinnipiac University, the program helps entrepreneurs navigate the paperwork and process of turning their ideas into businesses, like developing a business plan. 

Although ConnCORP’s main goal is supporting entrepreneurs, Swanson said a priority for her is that the Newhallville community feels welcome in the space and benefits from the success of ConnCORP and local businesses. According to Swanson, local communities can often feel isolated from business growth as businesses often do not have connections with those around them that would allow them to give back. Rather than bringing outside businesses in, ConnCORP has worked to strengthen businesses already in the community. 

Additionally, in thinking about how to use business to benefit New Haven, Swanson said ConnCorp has been careful to avoid bringing in investment that drives locals out of Newhallville. 

“We felt very strongly about not coming into the community and gentrifying it,” Swanson said. “Besides this program, we run a program where we are actually making sure we have affordable housing. We’re purchasing houses that are in disrepair in this neighborhood, fixing them up and offering them at affordable prices to people. By doing this work, we’re not forcing people out of the neighborhood that they grew up in, and we’re actually making life better for them.”

Evelyn Massey, owner of Noir Vintage & Co. and one of the entrepreneurs in the current cohort at the Lab, said that ConnCORP has provided crucial support for her business. She added that there are aspects of incorporation and running a business that would otherwise not be accessible. The Lab has also provided Massey a social space full of other entrepreneurs, motivating her to make her business a reality. 

Massey noted that although some programs have helped diversify the business environment in New Haven, gentrification in New Haven poses a hurdle to business benefiting the city. 

“Some parts of New Haven are sort of segregated,” Massey said. “We need affordable housing for people that can’t afford high rents … And a lot of people can’t afford them, and they’re not for the people that actually live here. I think that’s unfair.”

Owner of Mental Growth & Internal Healing Shenira Billups, another member of the Labs first cohort, said that without ConnCORP’s assistance she would be “flying blind”. Like Massey, she also said that ConnCORP has offered assurance and support that has helped boost her confidence in herself and her business. 

Billups also said that what makes ConnCORP unique in the New Haven economic ecosystem is its focus on community and local business growing together. 

“There’s nothing wrong with big business, but it’s just that you have these things taking over,” Billup said. “The little people lose out. And then you got the same folks coming around and it does nothing for really building community.”

ConnCORP CEO Eric Clemons said that, in addition to ConnCORP’s Lab, ConnCAT will be helping revitalize the community through their Dixwell development that will provide 184 units a housing, a supermarket, restaurants, retail spaces, a 300 seat Performing Arts Center, a 60,000 square foot office tower, townhouses greenhouses and a plaza for the community.

According to Clemons, ConnCAT has performed an economic analysis that showed that the property will bring $1 billion to New Haven, $100 million to the Dixwell neighborhood, 600 jobs and 700 construction jobs. For Clemons, both ConnCAT and ConnCORP are designed to provide wealth generation opportunities for historically disadvantaged communities. 

“The way I see success in this is the number of folks who are indigenous to this community whose lives changed socially and economically because of this,” Clemons said.

The Lab at ConnCORP is located at 496 Newhall St.

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With more than 35,000 dead and 380,000 displaced across Turkey and Syria, the devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake on Feb. 6 is one of the deadliest earthquakes in the 21st century. To provide relief to those who are dealing with the fallout, both the Diyanet Mosque of New Haven and Brick Oven Pizza have been accepting donations and resources. Since last week, the mosque has primarily been accepting donations of clothing and has gathered at least six 30-foot-long trucks worth of clothing since last week.  

“We have had a Zoom meeting with the Turkish ambassador in Washington every couple of days, and then we started talking about how we were gonna do it,” said Haydar Elevi, president of the Diyanet Mosque. “We organized with 150 organizations in the U.S. Everyone gets together, and everyone does the best they can.”

According to Elevi, Feb. 13 is the last day that the mosque is accepting donations of clothing. He added that the mosque has sent multiple trucks worth of donations to the Turkish consulate in Boston. Over the next few years, Elevi hopes to continue supporting those affected by last week’s earthquakes by raising funds. 

On Feb. 10, Sen. Richard Blumenthal visited the Diyanet Mosque to meet with members of the roughly 2,000-member-strong Turkish diaspora in New Haven. 

“[We’re] bringing clothing, & other supplies to this wonderful place of faith & dedication,” Senator Blumenthal tweeted. “What has occurred in Türkiye & Syria is a catastrophe of epic proportions. I will work & fight for any & all assistance—in medical supplies, food, shelter, clothing, & more—that are needed now in this moment of devastating disaster.” 

Another group in New Haven that has been collecting resources to send to Turkey and Syria is Pizza at the Brick Oven. 

The pizzeria, located on Howe Street, hosted a fundraiser where they donated all of their sales from 3 p.m. to 3 a.m. on Feb. 9 to Turkey and Syria. The fundraiser raised $9,215, which Brick Oven owner Kadir Catalbasoglu rounded up to $10,000 and delivered to the Turkish embassy. 

Catalbasoglu immigrated to the United States from Turkey in 1992 when he was 22 years old.

He said that since last Monday he has been talking to other Turkish members of New Haven’s business community. Although he said they are still developing ideas, they are hoping to come up with a way to gather blankets, supplies and cash to send back to Turkey.

According to Catalbasoglu, fundraising went well on Thursday in part because of coordination and support from the Yale’s Turkish Student Association, whose members were also at Brick Oven. 

“People will feel the effects of this for the next 10 years, and entire communities will need to be reestablished,” said Kemal Okvuran ’26. “There are hundreds of thousands of people that need to be moved somewhere, housed, sheltered, fed.”

Members of the TSA also told the News that their ongoing fundraising efforts with the International Students Organization have raised over $10,000. According to Okvuran, donations are also being matched two-to-one, and he said he hopes that it will increase to three-to-one soon. 

Ozan Okvuran ’26, another member of the TSA, said he worried that their fundraising efforts will likely dwindle as the news and social media move onto new topics. 

“So currently [we] have a lot of attention on the earthquake and especially the rescue efforts, but over the next few months, attention is going to dwindle,” Ozan Okvuran said. “Now it’s getting coverage, but in three weeks that’s not going to be the case, but in three weeks, there will still be hundreds of thousands of people living in tents.”

Since the earthquakes, the size of the TSA has doubled as Turkish students from Yale College and graduate schools have come together. TSA member Maya Ashaboglu ’26 said that the group has offered her support, especially during a time when most students seem to be unaware that there are Yalies for whom the earthquakes and aftermath are not just distant international headlines, but also events that affect them personally. 

Another member of the TSA, Cem Kupeli ’25, said that the focus of the group has not been on supporting themselves, but rather on finding ways to give to those back in Turkey. 

“Honestly, we haven’t really supported ourselves,” Kupeli said. “We’re only thinking about them right now. … We are only thinking about how we can help.”

The Diyanet Mosque is located on 533 Middletown Avenue. 

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Five refrigerated storage containers used by the renowned soul food restaurant Sandra’s Next Generation were the subjects of scrutiny at a Board of Zoning Appeals meeting on Jan. 17. Owners Sandra and Miguel Pittman came to the meeting seeking approval for the fridges to be kept on the lot behind Sandra’s on Arch St., although that lot is zoned for residential, not commercial, use. The Pittmans said that the extra storage was necessary to keep up with the increased demand for their restaurant. 

During the meeting, Ward 4 Alder Evelyn Rodriguez and other residents of Arch St. argued with the Pittmans and other New Haven residents, claiming that the fridges should not receive an exemption because of harm caused to the neighborhood. Ultimately, the BZA voted 2-2, meaning that Sandra’s was denied approval to keep storage containers on the Arch St. lot.

“It’s all up to you,” Miguel Pittman said. “No one can hinder you. They might slow you down in some cases, like what Evelyn Rodriguez is doing, but she’s not going to stop us. ”

Sandra’s opened its doors in 1989 and has since become nationally renowned for its soul food. While most restaurants struggled during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Sandra’s was able to quickly pivot to a take-out only model, tripling their business and even hiring more workers in order to keep up with the increased demand. To accommodate for the new upsurge in business, the Pittmans also invested in extra storage: five refrigerated storage containers from https://walkincoldroom.co.uk/, that sit behind Sandra’s.

According to Miguel Pittman, it is because of the amount of inventory that the containers can hold that Sandra’s is able to serve 300 to 600 meals a day. The containers also allow Sandra’s to save on the costs of ingredients by buying in bulk and avoid taking items off the menu due to ingredient shortages. 

He worried that not being able to house the containers on the lot would force him to make more trips to the store and buy in smaller quantities at higher unit prices, meaning that Sandra’s would face higher operating costs. 

“It might affect my bottom line a little bit, and if it does, unfortunately, I’m gonna have to lay some people off because I’m not able to conduct business,” Miguel Pittman said. “We have some employees that have certain commitments to their family, they have mortgages, they have kids in college, they have vehicles that they own, and unfortunately, if this whole piece doesn’t work out, they are going to be affected … We might have to move, which we don’t want to do.”

During the meeting, the Hill North Community Management Team submitted a petition in support of the exemption with over 200 signatures from residents in the community, including some who live on Arch St.. 

After receiving this decision from the BZA, the Pittmans told the News that they are in the process of appealing the decision. According to Miguel Pittman, although the lot is technically zoned only for residential purposes, because of its size, it is too small to use for any sort of residence. Rodriguez, he said, is personally invested in the location of the restaurant’s fridges.

“Evelyn Rodriguez owns a property behind Sandra’s Next Generation,” Miguel Pittman said. “She put in a request and made some phone calls, saying that she doesn’t like those containers, that those containers are taking away from the neighborhood, even though we provide 26 jobs for people in our community … She’s gonna use her political power to fight against us, even though those containers are within the structure of our property.”

Miguel Pittman also questioned Rodriguez’s concern that the containers were attracting rodents to the neighborhood. He noted that there were rodents throughout the city, adding that he did not see how animals could be attracted to the metal containers since they would be unable to penetrate the material. 

For Rodriguez, opposing the refrigeration units was a matter of upholding the law and representing her constituents. She said she received complaints from 25 residents living in close proximity to the fridges.

According to Rodriguez, despite being informed for several years that they were required to remove the containers, the Pittmans instead increased the number of containers on the lot from one to five and then requested a zoning change, “as if they had no containers and a violation was not occurring simultaneously”.

Rodriguez said the lot on which the containers now sit was intended to be used to plant grass and shrubs, but now is an eye sore. She described trash around the containers, which she said gives the neighborhood an unattractive appearance and can also affect the value of homes. 

“Neighbors were concerned,” Rodriguez told the News. “Food attracts animals. Despite the normal infest control, the problem continues and has increased. During the past year, we saw more skunks, raccoons, possums, mosquitos, flies and bees.”

For Rodriguez, concerns surrounding Sandra’s also point to a larger question of sustainable economic development. According to Rodriguez, as New Haven’s population grows, so does the demand for new products and stores. However, there is also a need to balance growth with preserving New Haven’s neighborhoods and protecting city residents.

Rogriguez also questioned whether Sandra’s, as a nationally renowned restaurant, is still suited to a location that was originally intended for a small business. 

“Sandra’s Next Generation is vibrant and its family has many wonderful ideas, and they are working at them,” Rodriguez told the News. “Use the location for smaller ideas. The restaurant may need to consider a bigger place.”

Unrelated to the zoning issues stemming from their refrigeration units, the Pittmans have been looking into opening another location in New Haven. According to Sandra Pittman, the new store will likely open within the next two years. Currently, the Pittmans are looking at locations on either Dixwell Ave., as part of the Q House, or Davenport Ave. 

The Pittmans described a long-term ambition to open a much larger dining hall that could seat 200 to 300 diners. Although Miguel Pittman said they would likely shift most of their resources and attention to this new location, he said that they plan to keep the Congress St. location and might turn it into a spin-off, offering a fusion of soul food and other cuisines.  

Since its founding, Sandra’s has become a pillar of the Hill North neighborhood. They host community events such as a back-to-school drive and  Halloween trick-or-treating. They also give out free meals during Thanksgiving and Christmas, providing nearly 1000 meals last Thanksgiving, according to Miguel Pittman. 

“I’m looking forward to Sandra’s Next Generation’s next generation, which is for my four children,” Sandra Pittman said. “We’ve worked very hard throughout the year to get our children prepared for the next generation … I’m looking forward to working very closely and working really close with him now.” 

Sandra’s Next Generation is located at 630 Congress St.

The post Fighting over fridges and the future of Sandra’s Next Generation appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The process for building the exhibit began about a year ago when Timothy Young, curator of modern books and manuscripts at the Beinecke, reached out to his colleagues at Sterling Memorial Library, sparking a new collaboration between the Beinecke and other collections at Yale. 

Young and his team gathered 36 material “vignettes” ranging from medieval manuscripts to modern poetry collections. Each vignette is a group of a few items — a few books, costumes, photos or pieces of art that all show different aspects of a common theme. 

“Let’s look at our collections and see if there’s something that seems to be very solid and accepted as a historical item,” Young said. “Let’s see if we can put it together with something that’s new that either challenges it, or contradicts it or says that the same kind of thinking is continuing over several 100 years, but let’s just try to make some interesting comparisons between older and newer materials.”

Young said that libraries often find it challenging to include marginalized voices because they are largely excluded by those who write the history books. With this exhibit, Young hopes to put some of those often-forgotten voices in dialogue with more traditional pieces in the Beinecke’s collection. 

One of Young’s favorite pieces in the exhibit is the pairing of a cowboy’s diary from the 1880s with a story from the 1980s about an immigrant moving to California to become a nurse. For Young, these two stories offer different versions of what it means to move west, deepening his understanding of what westward expansion and migration mean across generations of Americans. 

With this exhibit, Young was also excited to show viewers that the Beinecke’s collection includes more than just printed materials. For example, the library possesses costumes from Barbara Hammer, a filmmaker who pioneered lesbian film, and a puppet from playwright and director Lee Breuer, whose plays often “mashed up classical themes.”

Going forward, Young hopes to arrange more exhibits like this one that involve different collections, scholars and student perspectives, especially as Yale’s different rare book libraries become integrated into the Beinecke collection. 

While walking through the exhibit, Michael Ofodile ’26 said he appreciated the opportunity to bring his own past into conversation with the vignettes and to see himself in the works.

“It’s really cool to see how different cultures converge on similar things and ways to have fun,” Ofodile said, while looking at some playing cards from 19th century China and 20th century Japan. “When I was little, I used to play with playing cards, and it’s interesting to see other places a long time ago doing that too.”

Beinecke research assistant Isabel Prioleau ’25 said the exhibit added a new dimension to the readings she does for her French class by featuring work from assigned authors and contemporaneous works. Prioleau said she looks forward to bringing parts of the exhibit back to her class. 

Prioleau added that she also appreciates the variety in the exhibit, which she said sets an exciting tone for the year at the Beinecke. 

“What felt new and different about this exhibition to me was how open-ended it is,” Prioleau said. “I like the fact that everyone can be inspired in their own way. The exhibition feels less like it intends to create a single experience for viewers, and more like it’s celebrating all the various experiences visitors might have.”

The exhibit will run in the Beinecke library from now until July 9.

The post Beinecke Library unites past and present in spring exhibit appeared first on Yale Daily News.

In the hotel’s parking lot are three solar canopies that, together with additional panels on the roof, power the hotel. During the summer, the hotel produces more energy than it consumes. But because of the winter’s shorter days and increased energy demands, the hotel is not quite at net-zero, despite investment in solar panels, more efficient heating systems, energy storage and other technologies. 

Bruce Becker ARC ’85, owner and architect of the Hotel Marcel, plans to keep adding solar canopies until the hotel can contribute more than it takes from the grid and serve as the model for the hotel industry that he believes it can be. 

“The one thing I know is that you can’t keep doing things the way they have always been done because everything is always changing,” Becker said. “I like to go back to first principles and think about what makes sense today.”

According to Becker, when the Hotel Marcel was first built in 1970, it was a sign of optimism. The city allowed the Armstrong Rubber Company to purchase the land on the condition that they build a prominent ten-story building designed by a world-class architect. New Haven’s then-mayor, Richard  Lee, wanted to create this symbol of progress right by the highway, and for about two decades it served this purpose. 

The building, Becker said, was a beacon of hope. But once it became vacant in the 1990s, Becker said it transformed into a symbol of decline. By rejuvenating the building, Becker not only saw an opportunity to transform it into a symbol of reinvestment in New Haven but also reinvestment in the green economy. It reopened as the Hotel Marcel in 2022.  

For Becker, designing buildings to minimize emissions has been an obvious goal. On an aesthetic level, he told the News he wondered why anyone would want to design a building that produces waste or is harmful. Especially in the last decade, Becker has also conceived of sustainable buildings as necessary not only for combating climate change but also as a rational business decision. 

By electrifying the Hotel Marcel, Becker said he has been able to nearly eliminate the emissions that would be produced if the building were dependent on fossil fuels, although he did not yet have a hard number to offer on current carbon levels. Becker estimates that if the hotel were not powered by solar panels, it would likely produce about 1,980 metric tons of carbon per year.

According to Becker, although sustainable infrastructure can present an upfront cost, energy efficient systems such as Connecticut’s Property Assessed Clean Energy Programs reliably pay for themselves within a few years. 

“You can only charge so much for a hotel room in New Haven, so I figured if I can reduce my operating costs by a dollar, that’s just as good as getting a dollar of additional revenue,” Becker said. “We are probably saving at least a quarter of a million dollars a year in energy costs.” 

Becker believes that he is one of the first hotel owners to attempt to reach net-zero emissions in part because of how the lodging industry is designed. At any hotel, there are typically three parties involved: the operator, the brand and the owner. The operators are companies that supply the hotel owner with workers to staff the hotel, while the brand is typically a well-known company who operates on a franchise model. 

Becoming affiliated with a major brand was crucial, Becker said. Without such a partnership, he would not have been able to secure a loan from Liberty Bank to fund the project. The Hotel Marcel relies on its brand company, Hilton Hotels, to set standards for the hotel and help attract guests with their booking site. In the end, Hilton collects about 15 percent of the Hotel Marcel’s revenues. 

In this partnership between operator, brand and owner, the detail that makes sustainability challenging is the fact that both the operator and brand are typically paid based on the revenue of the hotel, not total profit. The amount the brand takes in is unaffected by savings on energy cost. 

“The operator and the brand, their revenue is based on the gross revenue of the hotel, whether the operating costs are zero or whether you are spending $15 per square foot to heat the building,” Becker said. “Doesn’t affect their bottom line at all. They have no incentive to save energy.”

In recent years, with the increasing drive to consider environmental and social factors, many firms like Hilton are now shifting to make the hotel industry more sustainable. However, according to Becker, whose hotel is featured in Hilton’s sustainability report, such efforts have often only resulted in firms changing the packaging of what they already have. For Becker, Hilton’s environmental concerns seem to be more of a marketing ploy, rarely resulting in fundamental change.

Hilton did not respond to a request for comment on their sustainability work. 

Becker explained that seeing change from such large firms is unlikely. In his view, this is because pledging to make change requires acknowledging how great the need for sustainability is, which, in turn, would require acknowledging how harmful the industry is overall. 

“It’s sort of like the legacy car companies suddenly starting to sell electric cars,” Becker said. “It puzzles me why there isn’t more interest in [net-zero hotels], but I think the more they focus on this project, the more they have to acknowledge the huge problems with 99 percent of their portfolio. It’s a conundrum for them.”

Ginny Kozlowski, the executive director of the Connecticut Lodging Association, explained that while sustainable technology has become less expensive and there are a number of funding programs from the state Green Bank, as well as tax incentives, cost is often the most significant barrier for hotels in becoming more sustainable. 

“These solutions are not inexpensive and our industry is still recovering from COVID,” Kozlowski said. “We had a really rough three years … We had 18 hotels in the pipeline before the pandemic to be built. Now there are three.”

Additionally, Kozlowski noted that not all hotels can easily find means of generating sustainable energy. Some are limited in the modifications they can make because they are on the historical registry. Others, Kozlowski said, simply do not have the space.  

“Bruce is fortunate he has a parking lot next door that can put solar panels,” said Kozlowski. “Not everybody has that ability.”

Kozlowski also noted that most hotel brands have begun taking steps to become more sustainable, such as using fewer small disposable shampoo bottles and not washing linens everyday. 

Steve Winter, executive director of the New Haven Office of Sustainability, highlighted other low-cost first steps toward limiting emissions that the state has made available, like free energy audits through the Small Business Energy Advantage program.

However, he also noted that there is a large role for the government to play both in terms of offering incentives and financing assistance but also in forcing Connecticut businesses to adopt more environmentally friendly building practices. 

“If we’re interested in meeting our climate targets, we likely will have to look toward those types of solutions as well,” Winter said. 

When Becker broke ground on the Hotel Marcel, he said he had a hypothesis that a net-zero hotel was possible, one that has now been confirmed. According to Becker, there is now no economic rationale to use fossil fuels to power hotels. The Hotel Marcel, Becker hopes, is the necessary model of what is possible that will begin moving the lodging industry forward. 

“The design and construction industry needs to be pushed because they are not moving fast enough,” Becker said. “There’s a need for people to think more collectively. I think we are not changing our ways fast enough. … I think people need to see an example and be emboldened … The real power of this building is that it can be an example.”

The Hotel Marcel is located at 500 Sargent Dr. 

Correction 2/1: The original article incorrectly stated that the Department of Energy heads the Property Assessed Clean Energy Program, which has been updated. Additionally, the article now reflects the correct name of the bank from which the loan for Hotel Marcel was taken out.

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