Campus clips

Yale’s endowment earned a return of 4.7 percent in the fiscal year that ended June 30, the university announced in September. Among Yale’s peer institutions, the figure was somewhere in the middle: MIT returned 8 percent, while Harvard had a slight loss of 0.05 percent. The endowment’s value stood at $19.3 billion at the fiscal year’s end. In related news, the university confirmed in September that David Swensen ’80PhD, who has directed Yale’s endowment since 1985, is being treated for cancer. Swensen withdrew from a seminar he was scheduled to co-teach this fall, but he continues to lead the investments office.

A Yale employee has filed suit against the university, claiming she was retaliated against because she tried to address problems in Yale’s reporting and handling of sexual assault and sexual harassment on campus. Susan Burhans, hired in 1999 as a security education coordinator, says she had her pay and her authority reduced after she brought up the issues; her suit says that many of those issues were later raised in a federal Title IX complaint against the university. Yale spokesman Tom Conroy called the suit “baseless” and said the university will “defend it vigorously.”

Chain eateries are popping up on New Haven’s Chapel Street. In September, lines stretched down the block for a new Shake Shack in a Yale-owned storefront opposite the Green. The national chains Chipotle Mexican Grill and Panera Bread are coming soon.