Campus clips

Personnel records from the Yale Police Department will be released in accordance with a ruling by the state’s Freedom of Information Commission, the university announced in April. Yale had previously argued that, although its police are sworn in as New Haven officers and have arrest powers in the city, they are not bound by open-records laws. (For more, see “Lux et Privacy,” March/April.) But the university decided not to appeal the commission’s ruling, saying it recognizes "the unique and public law enforcement role that its officers play in the City of New Haven.”

Yale’s engineering departments just got a promotion: the university announced in April that it is reorganizing them as the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Engineering was a separate school at Yale until the 1960s, when it was absorbed into the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS). FAS will continue to direct the awarding of degrees and the appointment of faculty in engineering.

The admissions rate for the Yale College Class of 2012 represents a new low: 8.3 percent, or 1,892 of the 22,813 students who applied. The Graduate School also had an extremely competitive year: about 7,800 applicants competed for 480 places in PhD programs.

The medical school, following the lead of Yale College (Light & Verity, March/April), is extending more financial aid to middle-income families. Beginning next year, families earning less than $100,000 a year will be exempt from the requirement that parents contribute. The previous cutoff was $45,000 a year.

A student who was arrested last summer for having illegal weapons in his off-campus room in a fraternity house (Light & Verity, September/ October) pleaded no contest in March and is now serving a one-year prison sentence. David Light '09 is under administrative suspension from Yale.