Campus Clips

Mark Alden Branch ’86

Helen Hadley Hall. View full image

Helen Hadley Hall, which has served the university as a dormitory since 1958, will be decommissioned at the end of the 2023–24 academic year, the university announced in February. The Temple Street building was built to house women in Yale’s graduate and professional schools; in recent years it has served all genders.

A Connecticut judge ruled in December that a lawsuit over Yale’s trustee election process can go forward. Plaintiffs Victor Ashe ’67 and Donald G. Glascoff Jr. ’67 filed the suit last April after the university discontinued the option for alumni to nominate a candidate for trustee by petition. They maintain that Yale’s actions violate its charter from the state and ask that the court prevent the university from eliminating the petition process. Judge John Burns Farley concurred with Yale’s motion to dismiss two of the suit’s counts, but he allowed the suit to proceed on the basis of a third count.

A new home is in the works for the David Geffen School of Drama. Provost Scott Strobel wrote in a message to the Yale community that the university has nearly reached its fundraising goal for a new building at Crown and York Streets. It would house the drama school and a new professional theater for the Yale Repertory Theatre, as well as rehearsal facilities for the Yale Dramat and space for the undergraduate theater, dance, and performance studies programs.

The new semester got off to a disturbing start for students on Old Campus. On the night before classes began, a caller told Yale Police he was in Bingham Hall and threatened to shoot people. The police locked down the quad and told students to shelter in place. After a search of Bingham and further conversations with the caller—who made racist threats—the police determined the calls were a hoax. No one had been charged at press time.