Yale Div School Eyes East Rock Home

Stephen Brown shows neighbors a map and photographs of 320 Canner St., a two-story, single-family home that Yale is interested in purchasing and converting to academic use.

Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - 

The Yale Divinity School is interested in purchasing a single-family home near its Prospect Hill campus and converting it into an academic building, thereby removing over $18,500 from the city’s annual property tax rolls.

At Monday night’s regular monthly meeting of the East Rock Community Management Team (ERCMT) at the mActivity Gym on Nicoll Street, Karen King from Yale’s Office of New Haven and State Affairs and Stephen Brown from Yale’s Planning Administration informed neighbors that the university is exploring a potential purchase of the two-story, single-family home at 320 Canner St.

The home, built in 1986, is privately owned and occupied and has an assessed value of $481,810 as of 2016. At the current mill rate of 38.68, annual property taxes on the home would be $18,636.

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Hundreds Rally Against Student’s Dad’s Deportation

Demonstrators march through Downtown and Yale’s campus on Tuesday night in support of a Yale undergraduate’s father who is facing deportation.

Wednesday, October 18, 2017 - Hundreds of Yale students, immigrant rights activists, and community allies rallied through the streets of downtown New Haven on Tuesday night in support of a Yale undergraduate’s father who has been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Colorado and faces deportation to Mexico.

Wrapped in scarves, coats, bullhorns, and posters, around 400 demonstrators marched and chanted along Crown Street, High Street, and Elm Street from 8:30 to 9 p.m. on Tuesday in opposition to an immigration enforcement system that they said unjustly tears families apart.

The protesters then gathered on the quad outside of Yale’s Sterling Memorial Library for another hour to listen to speakers pledge their support for the immediate release of Melecio Andazola Morales, a 41-year-old construction worker who has been held for the past week at the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) Denver Contract Detention Facility in Aurora, Colorado.

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Garage Eyed As Temporary “Commons”

Powers presents to neighbors.

Wednesday, April 19, 2017 - As Yale closes up its “Commons” for a $150 million rebuilding, it’s looking to a York Street garage to serve as a temporary replacement for student dining and big events.

The university is seeking city permission to convert the former dialysis center-turned-parking garage at 150 York St. into a temporary event space that will host both town and gown functions. The university already owns the building, and is waiting on City Plan Commission approval of its updated site and usage plans before beginning construction.

On Tuesday night, two Yale representatives presented the university’s latest plans for 150 York at the monthly meeting of the Downtown-Wooster Square Community Management Team on the second floor of City Hall. The university has already submitted its new plans for the building to the City Plan Commission, which is scheduled to vote on the proposal later this week.

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Latino / Iberian Film Fest Opens

Margherita Tortora (Thomas Breen photo)

November 11, 2015 - Margherita Tortora was not planning on hosting a film festival this year. A Spanish instructor at Yale who has been the director of the New England Festival of Ibero American Cinema (NEFIAC) for the past five years, Tortora wanted a break from the time, effort, and bureaucratic headaches that come with organizing an annual not-for-profit film festival. The only problem: She kept getting movies in the mail.

“All these filmmakers didn’t realize I wasn’t doing [NEFIAC] this year,” Tortora said, “so they just kept sending me their films.” With movies in hand and just enough funding from Yale’s Council on Latin American and Iberian Studies, she decided to put on a festival celebrating Spanish and Portuguese-language films after all — her sixth in as many years.

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6 Lesbian Films Break Ground

September 21, 2015 - Women are underrepresented in film.  No matter the success of Hunger Games or Bridesmaids or Spy or Trainwreck, women filmmakers and female stories are consistently given short shrift in an industry that is notoriously conservative, reluctant to stray too far from the formulaic, male-dominated productions that studios know will achieve a satisfactory return.

If women in general encounter a fair amount of resistance from a recalcitrant and prejudiced industry, lesbian women suffer from even greater cinematic neglect, both in front of and behind the camera. Lesbian women are doubly marginalized in the history and practice of film, often overlooked by mainstream production companies for daring to represent gender and sexual identities other than that sanctioned by prevailing social norms.

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Festival Of Italian Cinema Makes Hollywood Watch Its Back

Human Capital (2013)

April 24, 2015 - “The main idea is that we want to have an event that is able to connect the New Haven community, and in particular the Italian-American community, with the Yale student community,” said Chris Kaiser, a sixth-year PhD student in Yale’s Italian department. “And we want to do that in the context of Italian cinema. It’s our little contribution towards overcoming the town-gown divide.”

Hence the 10th Annual Festival of New Italian Cinema, which began last night and runs through Sunday at the Whitney Humanities Center.

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