The Yale Hunger and Homelessness Action Project, or YHHAP, is hosting its biannual YHHAP Fast on April 12. Students are encouraged to donate a dining hall meal swipe or make a direct contribution to support New Haven-based organizations fighting food and housing insecurity.

“The Fast allows us to financially assist New Haven organizations doing the critical hands-on work,” said Isabella Barboza-Rodriguez ’26, one of YHHAP’s co-chairs. “It also gives students not involved in YHHAP the chance to consider the issues many New Haven residents face, considering that 22 percent of New Haveners experience food insecurity yearly.”

Established as a recurring campus-wide event, the Fast has become Yale’s largest student-run fundraiser, collecting over $18,000 last semester alone. 

The majority of funds come from donated meal swipes, with additional contributions through Venmo and YHHAP’s website. This semester, the funds will be distributed among three local partners: Haven’s Harvest, Continuum of Care and the New Haven Inner City Enrichment Center.

“Donating meal swipes makes giving much more accessible and appealing to students,” explained Hari Manchi ’27, a YHHAP Fast member. “Every dollar makes a significant impact in many people’s lives.”

Students not on the traditional meal plan can still participate in the Fast. For example, by donating directly through Venmo (@Yhhap-Yale) or the YHHAP website, or by helping spread the word through group chats, clubs, or social media.

This semester, YHHAP is also collaborating with student groups like Whales of Yale, Yale Visual Artists and the Yale College Council. Sherkaan, Ay Arepa and Rubamba are also offering 15 percent discounts to students on the day of the Fast, and Willoughby’s is donating coffee to support YHHAP’s tabling efforts.

Beyond fundraising, YHHAP hopes the event sparks a shift in how students view their relationship with New Haven. 

“Being at Yale sometimes compels us to stay in the ‘Yale bubble,’” Barboza-Rodriguez noted. “It’s important for us to take a step back and try to help the community that we call home for these four years.”

Looking ahead, Jung hopes the Fast will grow to allow students to donate more than one swipe and possibly even contribute swipes they would forgo during religious fasts. 

“We’d also love for there to be increased interaction between the Yale community and the partner organizations—like group volunteering,” she added.

The fast will take place this Friday.

Correction, April 11: The article has been updated to reflect that Fast will happen on Saturday, not Friday.

The post Students may donate meal swipes in YHHAP fast on Saturday appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Yale Facilities, in collaboration with Yale’s Bird-Friendly Initiative, or YBFI, and the Office of Sustainability, is working to incorporate bird-safe design elements into both new and existing buildings. 

Birds often fail to recognize normal glass as a barrier. According to YBFI, “up to one billion birds are killed by window collisions each year in North America, making buildings among the leading human-caused drivers of wild bird mortality.” 

Thus, the YBFI is testing various window film applications with subtle, opaque patterns. These films help birds identify windows as obstacles rather than open flight paths, significantly reducing collisions.

“Our research, conducted in partnership with the American Bird Conservancy’s Glass Collisions Campaign, focuses on identifying and evaluating city, state, and federal policies and strategies that can accelerate the adoption of bird-safe building design at scale beyond Yale’s campus,” said Viveca Morris ’15 ENV ’18 SOM ’19, executive director of YBFI.

The YBFI uses the data it collects on campus to focus its strategies and reduce bird mortality through targeted design interventions. Morris emphasized the importance of data-driven solutions.

Recent efforts have focused on addressing bird collisions at existing buildings with high incidence rates. The YBFI has recorded a significant number of bird strikes at several sites, including Evan’s Hall, with 323 collisions, the Yale Science Building, with 56 collisions and Rosenkranz Hall, with 18 collisions.

Beyond retrofitting existing structures, Yale is incorporating bird-friendly measures into new construction and renovations. Science Hill’s new addition to Wright Laboratory will feature a bird-friendly facade, and renovations at Osborn Memorial Laboratories will include bird-safe glass.

“The current Yale design standard references the American Bird Conservancy (ABC) library of building materials,” Cathy Jackson, the director of planning administration at Yale’s Office of Facilities, wrote to the News. “As new products come to market, or are updated, the ABC tests and rates their threat factor to birds.”

According to Jackson, balancing bird-friendly design with architectural and sustainability goals is key. Window films not only reduce bird collisions but also allow for natural light and outdoor views. Additionally, the University is considering the environmental impact of materials used in bird-friendly designs, advocating for greater transparency in product sustainability.

Yale’s efforts extend beyond campus, with faculty and students actively contributing to broader conversations on bird-friendly design. In February, Yale participated in the Bird Safe Campus Summit, a gathering of researchers, faculty and professionals across North America focused on advancing bird-safe building strategies.

“Our students, faculty, and alumni are a strong knowledge community in New Haven, throughout the country, and globally,” Jackson wrote. “Sharing the work broadly is important, and bringing other approaches back to Yale is always welcome.”

The YBFI offers direct opportunities for students and faculty to get involved, whether through research, advocacy or hands-on efforts to enhance campus sustainability.

The Office of Sustainability is located at 70 Whitney Ave.

The post Yale builds momentum for bird-safe design to prevent window collisions appeared first on Yale Daily News.

In a crowded dining hall, amid the chatter and clattering of trays, a fleeting scent will transport me to a kitchen, a street corner, a family gathering. It’s as though the air carries echoes of home, no matter how far away it may be. The smell of cardamom, for example, instantly brings to mind my mother’s kitchen in New York City, a quiet afternoon spent stirring chai while the rain softly taps against the window. I may be hours away at Yale, but in that moment, with the scent curling around me, the distance feels shorter, as if memory itself can collapse miles into something as small and immediate as a breath.

There are other smells too, ones that come with the changing seasons. The crispness of winter air in New Haven is unlike anything I’ve known before, sharp and clean, with a touch of earthiness. It offers a sense of possibility, of beginning anew. Yet, it’s also a reminder of the years that have passed, of how much has changed in this life I am still building.

Sometimes, it’s the smallest smells that linger the longest. The scent of freshly brewed coffee, drifting from the Silliman Acorn, reminds me of mornings spent reading in the quiet corners of the NYPL library. The smell of rain on pavement during late-night walks across campus brings me back to a time before Yale, to another city, another life. There is something undeniably personal about these smells, they’re tied to experiences, feelings and places that can’t be replicated, no matter how many times the scent appears.

Scent is not just memory. It’s more than recollection; it’s connection. Each time a familiar fragrance enters the air, it reaches through the space around me, pulling threads that weave together past and present. At Yale, where I have settled between worlds, it’s the smells of my surroundings that help me make sense of where I belong. The aroma of the cooked meals in the dining hall is not my home, yet it calls me to pause, to take notice. The fresh, cool scent of the courtyard during fall walks is not where I grew up, but in the stillness of the moment, it becomes mine.

In this way, smell becomes both a bridge and a boundary, a reminder that home is not a fixed place but a shifting collection of moments and experiences. The scent of my mother’s cooking or a warm summer breeze are not things I can bring back with me, but they are the threads I carry forward. They are the traces of the lives I’ve lived, the memories I’ve gathered, and the places I have called home.

At Yale, where everything is new and yet somehow familiar, scent is the compass that anchors me. It reminds me of where I’ve been, of where I might go, and of the many places I have yet to visit. Each smell — sharp or sweet, fleeting or lingering — is a part of the journey, guiding me through the unknown with the quiet certainty that, in time, it will all come together.

The post The smells that take us back appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The bustling sounds of rickshaws and food carts gave way to the wail of sirens, the rumble of subway trains, the hum of a city that never slept. 

I was too young to hold onto the details of my first home, 

but I carried its echoes in the stories my parents told, 

in the smell of my mother’s cooking, 

in the way Bengali words felt soft yet distant on my tongue. 

I first returned the summer before my junior year of high school, a long flight across oceans, a descent into heat and humidity that clung to my skin. I traded glass towers for rice paddies, pavement for dirt roads. 

The air smelled different, earthier, heavier. 

as if the land itself remembered what I could not. 

Family I barely recognized greeted me like I had never left. 

Their faces were familiar yet foreign, their warmth both comforting and overwhelming. 

I saw my grandmother, her mind lost in the fog of Alzheimer’s. 

Her mind did not remember my name, but her hands did. 

Soft, wrinkled palms traced my face like they had when I was small. Her touch reminded me that love does not always need memory to exist. 

Now at Yale, I am in my third home. 

A place of stone buildings and hurried footsteps, 

of opportunity and pressure, of belonging and displacement. 

I move between spaces, 

never quite sure which one I truly belong to. 

Bangladesh is a place I left too early to remember, 

New York is a city I grew up in but never fully felt rooted in, 

and Yale 

Yale is a place I am still trying to understand. 

Maybe home is not a single place, 

but a patchwork of moments, people and memories 

some sharp, some faded, some I have yet to create.

The post Longing for a home that was never quite mine appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The Office of Sustainability has been at the forefront of Yale’s recycling initiatives. Lindsay Crum ENV ’15, associate director of the office, explained that the University recycling is collected by custodial staff and transported to a state-of-the-art material recovery facility in Berlin, Connecticut. There, technology sorts recyclables, but contamination often causes recyclable material to be discarded as trash.

“We’ve been working to reduce contamination, but we need the whole Yale community to be more mindful of what goes in the recycling bins,” Crum wrote. “Items like plastic bags, greasy pizza boxes, and food-contaminated recyclables are some of the main offenders.”

Efforts to educate the student body about these issues include the introduction of new signage across campus and a video series on Instagram that explains common contamination issues. However, students and sustainability advocates recognize that more is needed.

Carrie Lange ’27, sustainability policy director of the Yale College Council, emphasized that while students are generally aware of Yale’s commitment to sustainability, there is a disconnect when it comes to specific goals and actions.

“There’s a surface-level understanding, but many students don’t know exactly how to recycle properly,” Lange wrote in an email to the news. “Our goal is to make recycling practices clearer and to increase the availability of recycling bins, especially in residential colleges.”

Yale’s recycling rate was 34 percent in 2024, short of the target goal of 60 percent, highlighting the gap between Yale’s intentions and implementation. As Lange pointed out, residential colleges have varying systems, with some lacking sufficient space or clear signage for recycling.

In response, the Yale College Council has partnered with Yale Facilities to advocate for improvements, working toward more uniform and effective waste disposal systems across campus. According to the Fall 2024 survey, 52 percent of students felt there was not enough information available to guide them on how to recycle, signaling the need for more accessible educational resources.

Esperance Han ’28, a student passionate about sustainability, shared that while Yale’s program is excellent, food contamination and plastic bags remain significant barriers to effective recycling, and students must be more diligent in ensuring their recyclables are free of contamination.

“Yale’s recycling process is trustworthy, but it’s up to us to make sure we’re not contributing to the problem,” Han stated. “Contamination, especially from food waste and plastic bags, is the main issue.”

The Office of Sustainability is located at 70 Whitney Ave.

The post “We need the whole Yale community”: Yale falls short of its recycling goals appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The push for water station installations began in earnest with the successful pilot on Old Campus, where students previously had no access to in-building fountains. Yale College Council’s advocacy ensured the installation of filling stations in all Old Campus entryways, and the initiative soon expanded to residential colleges. 

“Water should not be an accessibility issue, and we are glad that Yale College agrees,” said Esha Garg ’26, YCC Vice President. “It is inspiring to see how this issue I started tackling in my first year will be fully addressed.” 

Recognizing the importance of both hydration and sustainability, Yale’s Office of Sustainability has supported the effort. 

Amber Garrard, director of Yale’s Office of Sustainability, noted that students have played a crucial role in advocating for these changes, citing past efforts like Pierson College’s installation of water fountains in 2021-22, led by a student Sustainability Liaison.

“We hope this will encourage students to stay hydrated and to reduce waste associated with single-use bottles,” wrote Garrard.

Currently, Pauli Murray and Benjamin Franklin are the only two colleges with water stations in every entryway, as they were built with them. Students who spoke with the News expressed frustration with the lack of water stations in their colleges, citing inconvenience and health concerns.

“The only place I’m ever able to fill my water bottle is at the dining halls,” said Aissatou Sow ’28. “There are some hard study days and long busy days where it would be so much easier to have greater access to water fountains in residential colleges.”

Mimi Papathanasopoulos ’26, YCC President, emphasized the importance of student well-being in this initiative. She expressed excitement about this long-standing student concern finally being addressed, counting this as a win for student well-being.

As the installation process rolls out, YCC remains committed to ensuring student concerns are met.

“We wanted to ensure that this happened as soon as possible to truly address student concerns,” Garg said. “Now, by summer 2025, 13 residential colleges are slated to have water stations installed.”

The Yale Sustainability Office was established in 2005.

The post Yale to install water filling stations in all residential college entryways by summer appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Yalies, including Tibrewal and Ning, prepare to tackle the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition — one of the most prestigious and notoriously challenging exams in collegiate mathematics, held annually in December. The math department supports participants through fall seminars designed to sharpen problem-solving skills while fostering a collaborative spirit.

“The Putnam is a test of problem-solving and creativity, not just mathematics,” Tibrewal wrote. “It’s about finding joy in solving hard problems, no matter the score.”

The Putnam challenges students across North America to solve 12 exceptionally tough proof-based problems over six hours. With a median score often hovering around two out of 120, the exam is both a formidable challenge and a rare opportunity to compete in collegiate-level mathematics. 

The Putnam’s difficulty sets it apart from other math competitions. Unlike high school contests, which focus more on computational skills, the Putnam emphasizes proof-based reasoning. 

Andrew Yarmola, a faculty member who helps organize the seminars, explained that the problems require insight and creativity rather than mastery of advanced theorems.

“Most research mathematicians would need hours to solve these problems, but Putnam participants have only six,” Yarmola wrote.

Ning added that another challenge of the Putnam is that the problems are “unlike anything you’ve seen before” and a successful solution often involves stringing together simple but unintuitive steps.

Weekly seminars help students practice with past problems while introducing key strategies. These sessions are also a space for building community.

“The moment when a group of students cracks a problem together is always inspiring,” Yarmola wrote.

For some, the Putnam is an important academic milestone, offering recognition and opportunities for those who excel. However, many participants approach it because of their sheer love of math.

“Even solving one problem is impressive,” wrote Yarmola. “It’s not about points—it’s about the engagement.”

Beyond the Putnam, the math department continues to nurture students’ problem-solving skills with events like the Barge Competition in the spring. This internal contest focuses on easier problems, making it a stepping stone for those interested in taking the Putnam in future years.

The collaborative environment also fosters lighter moments. Yarmola recalls one memorable seminar when a group of students cheered as a participant spent 20 minutes flipping a marker until it landed upright.

“Ultimately, the Putnam is about having fun, practicing, and never giving up,” Yarmola wrote. “It’s a way to remember that math is not just challenging—it’s also beautiful.”

The 85th Putnam Competition will be held on Saturday, Dec. 7.

The post Yalies prepare to take on the Putnam exam appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The group’s events, which include film screenings, panel discussions, and a showcase of cultural dishes, aim to deepen the Yale community’s understanding of Hawaiian sovereignty and resistance to colonial legacies. President Joshua Ching ’26 (Kanaka Maoli) described the week as a “celebration of the survivance of our people, our ʻāina and our sovereignty.”

“We’re working to push the boundaries of how sovereignty, independence and self-determination are traditionally thought of, both on this campus and in our communities,” Ching said.

Lā Kūʻokoʻa commemorates the 1843 recognition of Hawaiʻi’s independence from Great Britain and France. It also serves as a rejection of the illegal annexation of Hawaiʻi by the United States in 1898. This is the second year the event has been celebrated on campus, reflecting the growing presence of the Pasifika community at Yale.

Monday’s screening of “Act of War” was followed by a discussion with James Pakele (Kanaka Maoli), who spoke about Puʻuhonua o Waiʻanae, a Hawaiian refuge for unhoused people. He framed the refuge as a modern-day example of sovereignty and community-driven security.

“The key is a behavior,” Pakele said. “If you’re kicking people out … really, all you’re doing is trying to treat the lowest hanging fruit. But … the hard-to-get ones … still get [left behind].”

He emphasized the need for long-term thinking and multi-generational efforts in rebuilding and maintaining sovereignty.

“We never get to where we are in one generation,” Pakele said. “What can we get done offensively in this generation and then prep the next generation to take over?”

Amber Nobriga ’27 (Kanaka Maoli), treasurer of the Indigenous Peoples of Oceania — or IPO — elaborated on the deeper significance of the event, noting that Lā Kūʻokoʻa is often celebrated through Western lenses of sovereignty but that the work of Puʻuhonua o Waiʻanae offers an Indigenous conception of sovereignty.

“This approach to activism that James Pakele and Twinkle Borge have showcased throughout their lives and careers is one that needs to inform our own actions as we operate within the Yale community and our communities back home,” Nobriga said. “We need to hold this care and love for each other at the center of everything we do.”

On Thursday, the group will host a panel with ʻIhilani Lasconia to explore sovereignty’s intersections with gender and sexuality, addressing the challenges faced by women, māhū and queer Native Hawaiians. The panel will also draw connections between Native Hawaiian struggles and global movements for self-determination, such as in Palestine.

Since its founding last year, IPO has expanded its presence on campus, fostering a space for the Pasifika community and its allies.

“It’s been so encouraging to see how much our organization has grown,” Ching said. “The Pasifika community is growing and reaching all parts of campus — in ways that are meaningful, politically engaged, and true to our homelands.”

As he prepares to step down from his role as president, Ching expressed pride in the organization’s accomplishments and optimism for its future.

“This being my last term as president, I’m so proud of the work our organization has done and the community we’ve built,” Ching said. “I’m excited to ‘elder out’ and cheer them all on.”

IPO’s Lā Kūʻokoʻa celebration continues this week, culminating in a cultural showcase that promises to leave a lasting impression of Hawaiian resilience and the power of solidarity.

The post Yalies commemorate Hawaiian Independence Day appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Hosted at the Humanities Quadrangle, the symposium interweaved poignant stories about Okihiro’s relationships with his studies, friends and colleagues with panels on the themes “Asian American Studies Then and Now,” “Scholarship Unbound” and “Third World Studies.” 

“Professor Okihiro had a profound impact on the lives of many students and faculty across a career that spanned more than five decades,” professor Daniel HoSang, an organizer of the symposium, wrote to the News. “He loved the time he spent at Yale in the last seven years and we felt it was important to honor him not only for the gifts he gave us here but all the work he did across his impressive career.”

Before his passing in May, Okihiro taught the popular Yale courses “Third World Studies” and “Fruits of Empire.” According to HoSang, he started planning the symposium along with professors Mary Lui, Rod Ferguson and Lisa Lowe in June, shortly after Okihiro’s passing.

During the symposium, Okihiro’s colleagues reflected on his long standing concern with the way his fields of study interacted with institutions like Yale.

“While [Okihiro] is certainly considered one of the founding contributors of Asian American studies and Ethnic Studies, he was simultaneously always interrogating the boundaries of these fields,” Lowe read in a statement preceding the second panel, “Scholarship Unbound.” “He was intently concerned about how institutionalizing fields that had emerged originally as critiques of university exclusions — Asian American, African American, Ethnic Studies, or Women’s Studies — might neutralize their critical force.”

Speakers at the symposium also honored Marina Amparo Henriquez-Okihiro, Okihiro’s spouse who died in August 2024. HoSang recounted Henriquez-Okihiro’s achievements as a historian and teacher who sought to preserve Hawaiian history and culture. As part of Okihiro and Henriquez-Okihiro’s legacy, University of Hawai‘i at Hilo offers an award in their name each year to a student who “has made significant contributions toward Hawaiian history and culture in the community.”

At the symposium, HoSang also announced the new Gary Okihiro Third World Studies Library with a group of students who worked together to organize the library. Possible Futures, a local bookstore, also sold a collection of Okihiro’s books at a book stand during the symposium.

While some books from Okihiro’s offices on campus and at his home in Hawai‘i were donated to the existing Gary Okihiro Library at the Asian American Cultural Center, a group of Okihiro’s former students sorted the remaining books into a collection housed on the third floor of the Humanities Quadrangle. Each book in the library is stamped with a quote from Okihiro: “A book is a living organism / Dissect— Probe— Discover.”

“While we were building the library, which we finished on Saturday, October 19, we were taking care to respect the order in which he’d organized his books,” Sofia Schroth-Douma ’24 said at the symposium. “Sometimes we were so careful about maintaining the order of the books that we imagined he might have laughed at us about it. We were really moved by the chronologies in his library and how the shelves showed lines of connection from one writer to the next, and even from one field or school of thought to the next. ”

The symposium concluded with a reception at the AACC, where attendees shared anecdotes about Okihiro, toured the Okihiro library and wrote messages in his memory to be collected in a scrapbook for his family.

Okihiro was born on Oct. 14, 1945, on a sugar plantation in Oahu, Hawai‘i.

The post “Histories and Worlds Unbound” symposium honors Gary Okihiro’s legacy appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The News talked to Yale experts about predicting elections in a highly polarized and unpredictable political environment. Given the uncertainty about polling accuracy, they advise caution in reading too much into any single poll, focusing instead on trends and broader averages. 

“Historically, we tend to see significant poll movement in the last month of the election as undecided voters tune in,” said Kevin DeLuca, a political science professor. “Both of these patterns are what we’re seeing right now.”

Milan Singh ’26, an opinion editor for the News and Yale Youth Poll director, highlighted that young voters are showing similar Democratic leanings to the last election. A recently conducted poll by Youth Poll found that Harris leads 56-35 among young voters, compared to 47-46 among voters overall. 

However, there are significant challenges in accurately interpreting polling data. Gregory Huber GRD ’11 pointed out that polling data can be highly uncertain, particularly at the state level.

“The problem is that the samples we can obtain at the state level are hard to make representative of the final voting population,” he explained. “Because we have a sampling problem, we have to reweight the data to make informative estimates, but the reweighting process likely also adds uncertainty, meaning our best guess is on average correct, but the margin of error of the estimate is large enough for either side to win in most states.”

DeLuca echoed this sentiment, emphasizing the importance of considering polling aggregates rather than individual polls. He said that the overall reliability of the polls is hard to assess, as many new pollsters do not yet have a history of performance.

As the election nears, the dynamics surrounding polling methods are also evolving. DeLuca noted that many pollsters are now weighing results based on previous voter turnout, which is not something they have done in the past and could impact the perceived leaning of certain demographics. 

Such weighting makes polls more Republican-leaning, as pollsters are afraid of missing Trump voters, as they did in 2016 and 2020, DeLuca said.

The election will be on Nov. 5, and 5 million votes have already been cast.

The post Polling accuracy and uncertainty: Yale experts weigh in on 2024 election forecasting appeared first on Yale Daily News.