The Week in Brief

After being dumped by her lover, a Hong Kong woman proceeded to seek an outlet for her rage—telemarketer-style. According to the Mon., Feb. 19 issue of the Apple Daily, a local newspaper, the unnamed woman began placing more than 1,000 phone calls a day to her beleaguered ex-beau, who was eventually forced to change jobs and get new phone, pager, and fax numbers because of the harassment. Unfortunately for him, she soon got a hold of his new information and began sending him up to 500 faxes a day. The unlucky man was arrested this year under his ex-girlfriend's charges of assault and intimidation, but he has since been released on bail.

Benefits to include dental coverage and sex changes

San Francisco plans to become the first city in the U.S. to cover sex change operations for city workers under its new health care benefits program, officials said on Fri., Feb. 16. Supervisor Mark Leno said that workers could claim up to $50,000 for the cost of sex reassignment surgery under the new plan. The health care plan is expected to be approved by Mayor Willie Brown. The subsidy should be helpful, considering that sex-changes are estimated at about $37,000 for a male-to-female operation, while the more complicated female-to-male surgery costs about $77,000. "This is a medically diagnosed condition—gender identity disorder," Leno said. "It really is a matter of equal benefits for equal work."

Deliver us from weevil?

Scientists in Stockholm, Sweden have discovered a way to repel the pine weevils that plague that nation's forests, Sweden's TT news agency reported on Mon., Feb. 20. The new method involves treating trees with an odorous substance that resembles the tiny beetles' excrement. Female pine weevils lay their eggs in tree trunks and overlay them with their own feces. According to Kristina Wallerts, a researcher at the forest test park in Asa, "The smell tells the pine weevils: `Here lies an egg which we must take care of, here we must not gnaw.'"

—Compiled by Justin Chen from Yahoo! News and Reuters

Heard

"Rousseau had a bunch of masturbation scenes." —Pericles Lewis, Intro to Literary Theory

"I have these genitals for a reason. They're not just for purging urine!" —Lee Patterson, Chaucer

Yale Index

1. Number of years since the founding of the Yale Herald 15
2. Hours of birthday celebration which involve an open bar 3
3. Number of current and former Herald members partaking of open bar 150
4. Alcohol content of one beer, in ounces .5
5. Alcohol content of one glass of wine, in ounces .84
6. Average number of drinks per Herald member 5
7. Alcohol content of Herald members after three hours, in gallons 33.75
8. Height of a beer can holding 33.75 gallons of alcohol, in feet 37.5
9. Average height of a Herald member, in feet 5.5
10. Height of Herald editor needed to drink a beer 37.5 feet tall, in feet 495
11. Number of Heralds a 495-foot tall editor could produce 454,545
12. Height one Herald member will think himself after open bar, in feet 495
13. Number of Heralds he could produce .25

—Compiled by Nathan Littlefield

1) Manifest Destiny; 2) advertising revenue; 3) DTs; 4, 5) memory; 6) parties; 7, 8, 10, 11) math; 9) childhood trauma; 12) testosterone; 13) having tried

Yale Corporation publishes investor report

In the wake of the Yale Corporation's controversial investment practices, concerned Yale community members may have been given a bit of hope last week. On Fri., Feb. 16, the Corporation approved the release of a report from the Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility (ACIR) summarizing decisions that guided shareholder voting during the 1999-2000 fiscal year. The report was made public on Tues., Feb. 20.

The ACIR is an eight-member committee comprised of students, faculty, staff, and alumni that is largely responsible for determining how the Yale Corporation votes on shareholder resolutions.

The committee's undergraduate representative, Daniel Stone, DC '01, noted that the report is only about tobacco and genetic engineering. "This implies that [the committee] didn't vote against management regarding other issues such as global warming, pollution, and human rights," Stone said.

The only environmental issue that the report specifically mentions is the committee's decision not to adopt the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES) principles, which other large corporations such as Coca-Cola and Ford Motor Company have agreed to uphold. The CERES proposal will likely appear before the ACIR again later this spring.

In the past year the committee has taken steps to keep the general community better informed of its actions. A new website allows visitors to view responsible investment research databases as well as general committee announcements. "We are proud of the fact that we've developed a mechanism of communication and that information about what we do can be researched and discussed," William Goetzmann, ACIR chairperson and Yale School of Management professor, said.

Student interest groups hailed the ACIR report as a step in the right direction, but only a small step. "I think it is very positive to disclose information about Yale's actions as a shareholder and how Yale is meeting its moral and ethical obligations," Student Alliance to Reform Corporations (STARC) member David Corson-Knowles, TD'03, said. "In the near future, we hope that all of Yale's shares and all of its shareholder votes will be free, open, public knowledge." —Ellen Thompson

Students meet to put some green in blue

"Creating a pro-environment campus isn't about forcing students to eat granola and build houses out of cans," said Ian Cheney, BK '02, the moderator of the "Greening of Yale" meeting on Sun., Feb. 18, at Dwight Hall. "It's about instilling a sense of awareness throughout campus that living comfortably today shouldn't compromise preserving for the future. It's about making environmentally sustainable decisions in every classroom, dining hall, sports field, and laboratory on campus."

Cheney presented the Yale Sustainability initiative to on-campus environmental organizations, including the Yale Student Environmental Coalition, the Yale Environmental Law Association, Yale Green Corps, the Green Party, and Yale Outdoors.

The initiative is designed to realize the vision of an environmentally sustainable university through education, research, and advocacy programs. One goal of the initiative is to persuade the Administration to adopt a campus-wide, environment stewardship policy similar to those such as the Brown Is Big Initiative and the Penn Environmental program.

Other goals include electing students into the Environmental Focus Group, a group headed by Deputy Provost Pierre Hohenberg that provides informal advice to the provost and other officers of the University. Efforts are also being made to change the current environmental studies program from one half of a double major into a free-standing program. —Allison Yang

Old Campus no longer a freshman scene

Say goodbye to the Octet, Berkeley freshmen. Morsels, say hello to huge rooms in Durfee. JE sux—but will it suck more when annexed JE suxsters live in McClellan? Old Campus is going to look very different next year. For the first time in recent years, administrators have chosen to assign annex space to each residential college before housing draws take place later in the spring. And in doing so, they have created a plan that will cause dramatic Old Campus housing shifts.

Morse freshmen will be moved to Durfee, and Trumbull, JE, and Morse upperclassmen will live in McClellan. As a result, Berkeley freshmen, who now live in McClellan, will move in with Branford freshmen and Berkeley and Branford upperclassmen in Vanderbilt.

Because McClellan is not large enough to house all the freshmen from one single college, college Deans requested that it not house freshmen.

In past years, administrators assigned annex space to colleges after each college's room lotteries had begun. But this year as a result of the stress and panic caused by last-minute housing crunches, administrators, at the request of Deans, decided to pre-assign annex spaces.

Lindsay Firestone, TC '03, has mixed feelings about the housing shift. "A lot of us were looking forward to living in Durfee next year," she said. "Those rooms are really nice and the location is excellent. But, in McClellan, all the Trumbull upperclassmen will be housed together. And, we're all happy to have the Octet." —Alexis Swerdloff

Green party seeks Alderman candidate

The Green Party has announced that it will seek a candidate for the soon-to-be vacated Ward One Alderman spot.

"We are actively engaged in seeking a candidate, and we want to make an opportunity for any citizen to represent the ward," David Corson-Knowles, TC '03, an active member of the Green Party, said.

Corson-Knowles added that the party is also looking for candidates who wish to pursue alderman positions in districts with large student populations.

The party hopes to identify several students interested in the candidacy soon. They will have a registration drive and then an open primary, which will determine the party's official candidate for alderman.

Corson-Knowles said the party is also looking into election laws in an attempt to push back the selection process until next semester. They hope to be able to involve next year's freshman class.

—Amsalu Dabela

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