Legislation stalled this year to provide money for the program.
By Alicia Gomez Dec. 8, 2023 Newsletter Course – UConn Journalism Department
Connecticut officials have tried to stave off “brain drain,” a widespread immigration of educated residents to other states, with an idea called the “Learn Here, Live Here” program.
The UConn sign on the Storrs campus. Photo by Coral Aponte
“Learn Here, Live Here” is designed to help younger Connecticut residents buy their first homes. Under the proposal, anyone who graduated on or after Jan. 1, 2024, from any Connecticut high school, college or certificate program who makes less than $75,000 a year could receive a tax credit of up to $2,500 for a first-time homebuyer account.
The program and its $5 million funding stalled this year in the legislature, however.
So is so-called brain drain still a problem in Connecticut?
Norlinda Steward is a graduate of UConn’s biomedical engineering program. / Courtesy of Norlinda Steward
Norlinda Steward, a 2022 University of Connecticut graduate who has lived in New England since she finished her education, says she does not see herself leaving Connecticut.
“My parents are here. I like how close it is to other states – it’s easy to go to other places if I want to. It’s pretty. You can be in the city or in the country,” she said.
Although Connecticut’s housing is more expensive than other states, Steward says she is willing to wait out the housing prices to stay here.
Abigail Young is a graduate of UConn’s electrical engineering program. / Courtesy of Abigail Young
Abigail Young, a 2023 University of Connecticut graduate who moved from Connecticut to Massachusetts for work, says she is eager to return to Connecticut soon. It is her top state, and she wants to stay in New England.
“The infrastructure is really good compared to other states. So … in terms of where our tax money goes, you know we pay a lot of taxes, but our roads are good,” Young said.
Education also is a consideration.
“If I were to ever start a family, the schools here are good, and people are for the most part pretty well educated in Connecticut,” she said.
Young also likes the convenience of Connecticut’s location, which has easy access to Boston, Hartford, the shore and Rhode Island.
However, the traffic in Connecticut is a main reason she moved to Massachusetts to be closer to work.
She calls the drive from Massachusetts to Connecticut “atrocious.”
“Anyone who works north of Hartford, they will know that driving south to get anywhere on 91 is going to be a disaster, and traffic backs up for miles, and traffic can be there for … 30 minutes or more on a good day,” Young said.
The UConn exit off Interstate 84. / Photo by Coral Aponte
Other states in New England she might consider moving to include New Hampshire and Vermont, for the rural atmosphere.
Other recent UConn graduates have similar thoughts.
According to the UConn Career Center, The most common first destinations for UConn graduates since 2016 are Connecticut (62%), New York (12%) and Massachusetts (11.3%).
Most students stay in New England states, with the only exceptions being Florida (1.16%) and California (1.37%), with only 1% of recent UConn graduates choosing those as their first destination.
University leaders and faculty are navigating the use of AI and ChatGPT. For now, professors decide if students may use it.
By Alicia Gomez Sept. 29, 2023 Newsletter Course – UConn Journalism Department
A student logs in to ChatGPT. / Photo by Colleen Lucey
The University of Connecticut has caught one student plagiarizing using artificial intelligence, and another student’s actions are under review, according to a UConn spokesperson.
But UConn’s policy can be as confusing as AI. Two students with the same major or professor may have different rules on whether they can use ChatGPT for their classes.
The rules around using ChatGPT for students often depend on the professor and the class itself.
Department of Accounting head George Plesko said in a recent interview that professors can choose how to approach AI use among their students, this may vary by course and instructor. In his courses students can use AI tools such as ChatGPT, provided they properly cite and fact-check the tool’s output.
Plesko said it’s likely accounting students will use AI in the workplace, as many accounting firms use the tools in limited ways. Plesko wants his students to have this experience.
George Plesko, head of the Department of Accounting at UConn. / Photo courtesy of George Plesko
“Well, given the fact that they are going to be working with it or using it in the real world … there’s no reason not to allow them to, with some restrictions, in the classroom,” he said.
However, Plesko said, students also must ensure they’ve gotten accurate information. Professional accounting firms use specialized AI tools that scrape information from carefully specialized databases unlike ChatGPT, which scrapes entire databases from the web.
“To the extent that ChatGPT goes out and tries to find information or tries to put together a coherent argument on something else, in many ways, it’s really no different than somebody trying to do other kinds of web searches, let’s say even going to Wikipedia and trying to find information,” Plesko said. “The difference, of course, is, as it says in the syllabus, layering on to that the responsibility for the student to know that whatever they’re citing or dealing with is accurate.”
Dongjin Song, assistant professor in the computer science and engineering department, working on machine learning and data mining. / Photograph by Alicia Gomez
ChatGPT is a generative model of AI and type of “large language” model. In large language models, randomness is involved when generating results, according to Dongjin Song, an assistant professor in the computer science and engineering department in machine learning and data mining.
“This randomness probably sometimes can give you a correct answer. Sometimes it can give you some incorrect answers,” he said.
For now, ChatGPT is trained with common questions that it can answer reliably, but some questions are outside its scope of knowledge. Due to limited data, these questions may produce inaccurate results that look authentic and reliable. It may take a careful eye to determine whether the information is true or false.
“Whether you can leverage ChatGPT’s output depends on whether you’re asking the proper questions,” Song said. “Also, you need to be an expert in that domain to judge whether the output is reliable. If you do not know anything, you’d probably think, ‘Oh, this is true.’ That can create a misconception, and that’s not good.”
Tom Deans, the director of UConn’s Writing Center, is part of a group that represents UConn in a 20-school consortium in a two-year research project put together by Ithaka S+R, a nonprofit organization. The research project aims to “assess the immediate and emerging AI applications most likely to impact teaching, learning, and research and explore the long-term needs of institutions, instructors, and scholars as they navigate this environment,” according to a press release.
Deans has also researched generative language learning models such as ChatGPT in higher education and how tutors may use it in the Writing Center.
Tom Deans, director of UConn’s Writing Center. / Courtesy of Tom Deans
Deans uses an article he wrote with two students, Noah Praver, a UConn Writing Center tutor, and Alexander Solod, the president of UConn’s AI Club which trains Writing Center tutors, on the best uses of AI. Together they have found that the best way to make use of ChatGPT in the Writing Center is through assigning a “role” to ChatGPT, the article says.
“That’s a smart use of the tool. Otherwise, you are using the tool in a kind of a dumb way. Or not in as smart a way as you could. If you’re going to use it, know something about how these models work, do a little bit of prompt engineering even if just to say, ‘Play the role of an anthropology graduate student or professor,’” Deans told The Husky Report in an interview this week.
Although Deans encourages his tutors to use ChatGPT in “small strategic ways,” the majority of Writing Center sessions do not involve the use of ChatGPT.
“It sort of comes out if there’s a problem to solve that two human beings are struggling with or a problem of speed like they just need to do something more quickly because someone has a really short appointment. Or the two of them are stumped, and they’re kind of like, ‘How do we rephrase this sentence? We could fiddle with it for the next twenty minutes, or we can ask ChatGPT to come up with three responses, and then maybe those will spark us,’” Deans said.
Although professors may be worried about students using the tool inappropriately, Deans said, detection tools such as ZeroGPT, may not be the right solution. He recommends UConn not pay for detection tools, which he says are often inaccurate.
“If a company is basically trying to profit off of the paranoia of faculty thinking students are cheating, it’s a game where I just think there are better ways to deal with it. … Student dishonesty is a real thing, and you’ve got to address it, but we already have academic dishonesty policies,” Deans said. “Every minute or dollar spent on enforcement is a minute or a dollar not spent on teaching or prevention.”
Song agreed they may be inaccurate. “So far, I haven’t seen a well-accepted tool that can be used to detect whether something is written by a machine.”
In January, the Office of the Provost at UConn provided guidance to faculty regarding ChatGPT’s impact on teaching and learning. University leaders and faculty are navigating the use of AI as a tool, working to ensure students have practical and responsible experiences with AI while upholding their commitment to academic integrity.
“Based on conversations to date, our faculty are simultaneously interested in learning how ChatGPT3 and similar chatbots might transform teaching, learning, and assessment in innovative ways and concerned about students’ use of ChatGPT3 to answer test and exam questions and generate content for written papers and assignments,” the message on UConn’s Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning website says.
The solutions CETL provides to professors includes experimenting with ChatGPT to discover its “capabilities and limitations,” having discussions with faculty and students about ChatGPT, amending syllabi to mention ChatGPT, and amending assignments to be incompatible with the use of ChatGPT.
Department approaches: Psychology
The psychology department has not made a uniform decision on student use of AI. However, Etan Markus, the department’s associate head of graduate studies, feels wary about using it.
“Everything is baby steps. No one is trusting it at this point. But everyone’s exploring it. We’re all very excited about the options,” Markus said, adding that he believes it will get better. “There’s still kinks and problems.”
Markus uses AI in his own research, including a software that identifies the body parts of lab rats during tests. Markus draws the line with using AI at classroom assignments. Following the increase of online learning, he altered the exams for his graduate classes to be taken in-person and written in testing booklets to combat cheating.
Markus does not like reverting back in technology, but is relieved to have an option to even the playing field between students. He also combats cheating by asking questions specific to in-class material.
Although there is no department-wide policy on ChatGPT, he requires that students using the tool for help with their homework be transparent.
Next semester there will be no need for transparency. This spring, graduate students will be able to take a class called, “Using ChatGPT and AI as a tool in psychology”. The recently approved course will be experimental and geared towards student interests.
“I’m trying to persuade one of my undergraduates to give one of the lectures. It’s cool that you have an undergraduate that’s going to be able to teach the faculty and grad students stuff,” Markus said.
The course will offer students the opportunity to see how AI can assist with research and writing. ChatGPT can be particularly helpful in “diagnosis writing” where during clinicals, students can enter behaviors, which the tool will write into a personality profile. ChatGPT can also help students write codes for research data. The trial-and-error class will also have discussions for students to share their experiences using the software.
Markus is looking forward to the AI class, the structure of which he is still planning, next semester, and hopes to create an undergraduate version as well.
Department approaches: Economics
Kathleen Segerson, board of trustees distinguished economics professor at the University of Connecticut. / Courtesy Kathleen Segerson
Economics is facing the same issue: not having a department-wide policy, instead allowing professors to create their own guidelines. However, all professors must follow the same university procedure if they suspect misconduct, according to Kathleen Segerson, the board of trustees distinguished professor of economics.
Sergerson said ChatGPT can be used as a starting point for students. For example, if they wanted to ask an economic question, the tool can provide references, summaries and even sources. Students are strongly encouraged to read the original source to check its validity.
ChatGPT can also help students working with “production functions”, an economic tool showing the relationship between the physical inputs and outputs of goods. In this case, ChatGPT shows students what to enter into the equation, rather than providing an answer, according to Sergerson.
“One sign of cheating is when something a student hands in differs from what I would have expected,” Sergerson said. “This is not evidence of cheating, but it raises a question.”
ChatGPT’s rising popularity has complicated the department’s position on what is considered academic misconduct. The department continues to have discussions and hope to offer greater assistance to the faculty on this matter.
WATERBURY – When Latonya Inman opened the front door of her Waterbury home Thursday morning to drive to work, she was met with an empty space where her 2017 Kia Soul was supposed to be.
She said she called the police and reported the car stolen. About two hours later, police told Inman they had seen her car parked on a street about 10 minutes away. But by the time officers escorted Inman to the location, she found the back windows of her vehicle had been busted out.
Although her car was recovered, Inman said she had to make an insurance copayment for the damages, pay $100 for a rental car and miss a day of work. Since the incident, she has installed a steering wheel lock and plans to add cameras outside her home to prevent future auto thefts.
“It’s so time-consuming, inconvenient and inconsiderate of these freaking knuckleheads. I am so angry. I believe parents ought to be held accountable,” she said.
Inman is not alone in her frustration.
Car thefts in Waterbury have experienced a significant surge, according to police, with 322 stolen cars reported between January and May of this year compared to 204 in the same period last year – a 57 percent increase. Officers have arrested more than twice the number of juveniles than adults for auto thefts this year. Half of these juvenile arrests involve repeat offenders, indicating an alarming trend, police said.
Most juveniles who commit car thefts in Waterbury are one-time offenders, local police told CT Examiner, but the majority of the city’s car thefts are repeatedly done by a group of about 15 to 20 juveniles. Police Chief Fernando Spagnolo said he believes there is a lack of engagement between family members and the juveniles who steal cars.
“They don’t appear to have a lot of support in their family. They don’t really seem to have an interest in support from the community, and they continuously engage in this type of dangerous behavior,” he said.
Local police have been struggling since 2017 with juvenile auto theft. They have been working with the juvenile prosecutor and probation officials, and created a crisis intervention team with licensed behavioral specialists for children, mentorship programs and summer youth employment programs, Spagnolo said.
“There’s a lot that we offer them. But, the problem in juvenile court is… my understanding is that the judge doesn’t have a lot of authority to mete out a requirement of behavioral health services or some other kind of services until the case is adjudicated. We can ask them to come, but very few would take advantage of it,” he explained.
Spagnolo said more resources need to be invested in these juveniles rather than locking them up.
“My suggestion would be to hold this child and have this child evaluated, and maybe even have their family evaluated to find out what type of services or needs the state, a municipality, or the government in general could provide to change the course of direction,” Spagnolo said.
Spagnolo added these juveniles tend to commit more violent crimes or the same crimes as adults, and the system allows them to be held when they are older.
“At some point when you have a child that steals a car five, six, up to 10 times, is brought to juvenile court … is released back to his family, and that same night steals a car again, and the same police department picks them up and brings them back – and that happens two or three times in a row – there should be a red flag that goes off, Spagnolo said. “There should be a bell that goes off in everyone’s head that says something is wrong and putting this child back into the same exact environment that you took the child from is not the answer.”
Although Spagnolo believes the courts should release a child who has committed car theft, he also thinks there should be substantial supervision of the child’s life circumstances.
Inman shared a similar view.
“The parents ought to be held accountable because enough is enough. It’s getting to be way too much,” she said. “If that were the case, the parents would be engaged in their children’s lives and directing them in becoming better versions of themselves.”
Spagnolo described these crimes as a crime of opportunity.
“We don’t live in a society currently that allows for us to be laissez-faire with our property. You need to take some steps to protect your property, and that means locking up your valuables, not allowing your car to run unattended,” he said.
Alexa Udell, a third-year psychology student, was having trouble in her statistics class. She was used to using tools like flashcards and notes to study for her psychology exams, but she found herself stumped on how to study for statistics. Trying to figure out the practice problems in her textbook felt like an impossible task.
Desperate, Udell turned to another solution: ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence natural language model. Finally, a weight lifted off her shoulders. She could study without feeling lost or panicked if the lecture went too fast for her to understand.
“I look at my textbook for practice problems and ask it to do that for me. It’s really nice because it does it step-by-step,” Udell said. “Like for a mathematical proof it’ll say stuff like: ‘Because of this, we do this. According to this rule, we do this. Here is the formula.’ ”
ChatGPT, an Artificial Intelligence chatbot trained to produce human-like text based on input, can spit out essays in seconds based on a prompt or code. It can even give advice. Although there has been a lot of concern about students using the new technology to cheat, there is also a growing trend of students and university writing centers using ChatGPT as a valuable tool in education settings.
Tom Deans, director of the UConn Writing Center, said that about 70% of UConn students surveyed were interested in learning more about using AI writing tools in their coursework, according to data he presented at the Northeast Writing Centers Association conference.
“I think everybody’s gonna be using it, It’s gonna be inside Word, it’s gonna be everywhere,” Deans said.
For example, Deans said ChatGPT has gained popularity at the UConn Writing Center, where tutors are experimenting with using it to help students with their writing assignments.
Deans said in his classroom that he allows students to use ChatGPT as a tool with credit. However, he believes professors should be clear in their course policies about what they define as plagiarism regarding ChatGPT. He said that if students use ChatGPT to write their full essay, it is already covered by UConn’s academic dishonesty policy. However, professors at UConn vary in their policies on using ChatGPT, Deans said.
“In my own classroom, I said, ‘You can use it for whatever you want, except for when I say you can’t,’ ” Deans said. “But you have to write an acknowledgment statement that says what and how you used it.”
Deans said he has seen professors prevent students from using ChatGPT primarily by changing their assignments. For example, they may write questions that rely on specific information students may learn in class or account for more recent readings, as ChatGPT is only trained on information up to 2021.
Even though ChatGPT has been an invaluable tool, Deans said it could not replace face-to-face tutoring offered in writing centers. Human tutors offer specific advantages ChatGPT won’t be able to replicate.
“It doesn’t understand context all that well, so it’s not going to understand your particular class and where you are in your writing process and what you are trying to do,” Deans said. “So that can only happen in a conversation.”
ChatGPT also tends to make up false information that sounds correct when it is unsure of the answer, said Alexander Solod, the President of the AI club at UConn, who has been working with Deans. Solod said this phenomenon is called “AI hallucination.” Because of AI hallucinations, students may have to be careful about using ChatGPT on their assignments. For example, if a student plugs in their essay question and ChatGPT spits out a response, it may sound like a plausible answer to the untrained eye, but a professor may easily be able to see that it is riddled with factual errors.
However, despite the disadvantages, there is still usefulness to be gained with ChatGPT, like its availability, Solod said.
“This right here is like a 24/7 tutor that is skilled in almost every single at least undergraduate university task,” Solod said.
Solod and Noah Praver, a UConn Writing Center tutor, found that ChatGPT can expand paragraphs, give tips, write a thesis, think of a title, rewrite sentences, and more. However, it is important to make specific prompts, or “prompt engineer.” They believe that professors and tutors should train students to do that.
For example, when Solod struggled with understanding the lectures and textbook for his biochemistry class, he told ChatGPT to take on the role of a biochemistry tutor to explain what he was stuck on, he said. Solod was also able to ask ChatGPT to come up with questions that a biochemistry professor would ask on a quiz based on Solod’s notes.
“By assigning it a role and making your question really, really specific, you could get the most out of it,” Solod said. “By assigning it a certain ‘personality,’ you are able to extract more information or to extract a better result out of the model based on whatever task you want to accomplish.”
Solod predicts its popularity will continue growing as Google and Microsoft integrate generative AI technology into its writing tools.
“These tools will become a staple in our day-to-day lives kinda the same way that Google has become ubiquitous and everybody uses it,” Solod said.
Solod also recognizes risks associated with trying to prevent the use of ChatGPT in the school setting. He has been seeing a growing number of Reddit posts where students claim that they have been falsely accused of using AI tools in their writing because AI detection tools are largely inaccurate, he said. So he has tested it out himself, putting in both middle school assignments he wrote long before the release of ChatGPT as well as the Declaration of Independence. ZeroGPT detected both of these texts as AI-generated.
ZeroGPT, an AI detector, detects the Declaration of Independence as AI GPT generated. (Alicia Gomez / UConn Journalism Magazine)
“The want to want to try to detect and regulate is one that we will slowly need to try to bypass and instead focus on how to teach responsible and ethical use of AI instead of a blanket ban on it,” Solod said.
A UConn student in his freshman year studying computer science who has asked to go by Rafi for fear of academic repercussions said he knows ways to evade detection from plagiarism detectors and professors when he uses ChatGPT. One way is to be specific in prompts, similar to prompt engineering.
“I can ask the ChatGPT to write it as if it’s coming from a college freshman, and ChatGPT will write it in that style,” Rafi said.
He said that students could also take the output they receive from ChatGPT and reword it.
“You put it in ZeroGPT, you see if it’s detected, you could change it up a bit and just keep going through until it’s much less or completely undetectable,” Rafi said. “If you put in spelling mistakes, then that really throws ZeroGPT off.”
However, Rafi said he suspects that detection tools at ZeroGPT are not popular among professors at UConn yet, but may be in the future.
Rafi said he believes there are two reasons why people may use ChatGPT instead of doing their own assignments. First, some students may be just “going through the motions in college” and are not making the most of their education; they are simply just trying to pass. So it may make it easier for these students. Some students are under academic pressure and want the time to focus on other classes, Rafi said.
“As advice for students, look, if you get away with it, if it’s a class you don’t feel is necessarily going to help you, do it while you can, take advantage of it, sure,” Rafi said. “Just don’t be stupid. Give it good prompts, read over it, understand what it’s saying, try to at least understand a little bit. Don’t just be lazy, that’s all.”
By Alicia Gomez
June 14, 2023
The Connecticut Examiner
The Waterbury Board of Education at a meeting on June 13 at Waterbury Arts Magnet School. (Alicia Gomez / CT Examiner)
WATERBURY – After hearing concerns from the Waterbury Muslim community, the Board of Education voted 9–1 on Tuesday to modify the academic calendar to recognize Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha as school holidays.
About 50 local Muslim community members attended the meeting, with many speaking about the benefits of recognizing Eid. Muslim students reasoned that including Eid as a school holiday would open a conversation with non-Muslim students in the school district and could become a teaching moment about their culture. Students said the holiday could also help reduce the bullying they experience.
Students told board members that that potentially missing out on education when absent from school during Eid caused them stress and worry.
“A lot of Muslim students agree that they feel invisible. They’re out there, but they’re invisible. There is no acknowledgement,” said Jawad Ashraf, a Waterbury Islamic Cultural Center member. “If we give them the holiday off, that’ll go a long way in actually initiating a conversation and the opportunity for our teachers and instructors to be able to engage students.”
In collaboration with the Connecticut Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Waterbury Islamic Cultural Center, Waterbury’s Human Rights Commission Vice Chairman Fahd Syed has led the Eid holiday campaign for the past few weeks. Syed estimates there are between 4,500 and 5,000 Muslim students in the Waterbury school district, making the recognition necessary.
Syed, CAIR and the WICC held a Zoom meeting in May with Waterbury school administrators and over 100 community members to consider adopting the two Muslim holidays. More than 200 people also attended a Board of Education meeting on May 18, where many Muslim parents and students addressed the board with their concerns.
“We want to have equal treatment like all,” Syed said.
Waterbury Schools Superintendent Verna Ruffin encouraged attendees to express how they felt to the board.
“I believe that it is important for school districts to listen to students, parents and the community in which they are located, and I believe that the community, especially our Muslim community should have the opportunity to express how they feel,” Ruffin said.
Several school board members said they sympathized with students who wanted to observe their religious holidays without worrying about school and bullying.
“What bothered me most was listening to bullying that students had to go through,” Board of Education Commissioner Rocco Orso said. “It really bothers me, and no child should have to choose between school and being there with their parents and praying during their holiday.”
Commissioner Thomas Van Stone was the only school board member to vote against the proposal, worried about non-Muslim parents that would need child care while they are at work.
“I just don’t think we put this together well,” Stone said. “In the future if we could make this a citywide celebration, I’d proudly vote yes.”
In 2015, Waterbury was Connecticut’s first public school system to recognize Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, allowing students excused absences during the Islamic holidays, Ashraf said.
Eid al-Fitr is an Islamic holiday that marks the end of Ramadan, a month of fasting. Eid al-Adha is known as the “Greater Eid” and marks when thousands of Muslims make a pilgrimage to Mecca. Their timing differs annually, as they follow a lunar calendar, with Eid al-Adha following Eid al-Fitr by a little over two months. In 2023, Eid al-Fitr was celebrated on April 9, and Eid al-Adha will be celebrated on June 28.
By Alicia Gomez
June 10, 2023
The Connecticut Examiner
WATERBURY – I arrived at Chase Park in Waterbury about 10 minutes after the yoga class started Saturday and gently laid my mat on the grassy field behind the attendees, nervous about disrupting the flow or drawing attention to myself.
From there, I could observe the other attendees move through their poses. As one who usually spends days inside reading, I felt unqualified to mimic poses like the “downward-facing dog” or the “tree.”
Our instructor, Katlyn Hagley, guided us through the downward-facing dog. We planted our hands and feet on the ground and lifted our hips toward the sky, forming an inverted V shape with our bodies. With my hands and feet firmly planted on my mat, arms extended, and legs stretched as much as possible, I felt my limbs strain. Suddenly, my legs started to shake with an unexpected tremor, a fear of falling or losing balance surged through me.
But glancing around, I noticed participants of all ages and abilities, each going at their own pace. Some were swiftly getting into position, while I noticed an older adult had yoga blocks to shorten the distance between her and the ground. Some small children were modifying the downward-facing dog, slightly bending their knees. Whenever I felt unsure about how my pose looked, Hagley reminded us that the most important part was not how we looked but where we felt body tension.
A Yoga in our City class in Waterbury. (CT Examiner)
“Embrace the shake,” Hagley told the class.
I then started focusing on my breathing. I allowed my thoughts to notice the gentle breeze and the sounds of birds chirping.
Hagley has taught the class for five years and is a special education teacher at Waterbury Public Schools. As an instructor in a park setting, she said the class dynamic changes constantly. She has had to adapt to teaching through various types of weather, noise levels and the observed experiences of her students.
“I’m very fortunate that I’m an educational teacher outside of teaching yoga. So I’m very comfortable making modifications on the fly,” Hagley told me. “I kind of have to feel the energy of the people there and work with whatever is going on environmentally. I gauge what I teach based off of what I’m seeing and the feedback that I’m getting visually.”
Hagley said she enjoys hearing from students who have reaped yoga’s mental and physical health benefits.
“There are so many regular students who have been attending the Chase Park classes who say when they don’t occur during the winter months, they really miss the community,” she said. “They miss the connection with each other and the connection with the outdoors.”
One of these regular students is Gzima Doko, a Waterbury resident who said she has never missed a class and that the practice has even helped her quit smoking. She has invited her coworkers to attend with her regularly.
“I practiced yoga 20 years ago back in my country in Macedonia,” Doko said. “When I saw on social media about Yoga In Our City, I was so happy. It’s free, and the teachers are great. I love all of them.”
As I packed up my mat at the end of class, I felt a change in my confidence; that yoga is not just a matter of physical fitness but also about nurturing mental and emotional well-being, embracing imperfections, and focusing on the present moment.
Yoga In Our City is a nonprofit organization that hosts free yoga classes in public parks across six different cities in Connecticut. It started in Hartford in 2012 as a project of Civic Mind, a self-described “full-service social impact agency.” Since 2015, Yoga In Our City has partnered with ConnectiCare, which has provided the funding to expand to more cities, including Waterbury, Willimantic, New Haven, Bridgeport and New London.
Since then, more than 15,000 members have taken part in their local and accessible yoga instruction, according to the group’s website.
You can find out more about the classes, which will be held in Hartford, Waterbury, Willimantic, Bridgeport, New London and New Haven until Oct. 9, at their website.
The Dodd Center hosted Carl Wilkens, a former humanitarian aid worker during the Rwandan genocide in 1994, who discussed the concept of restorative justice and how Rwandans restored trust in their former oppressors while living among them.
This discussion, “Rwanda’s Restorative Journey: Living Alongside the Enemy,” took place at Konover Auditorium on Jan. 24.
Photo of The Dodd Center for Human Rights. / Alicia Gomez
“Can people who killed their neighbors really live peacefully with those they failed to kill?” Wilkens asked.
He told the story of Maria, a survivor of the genocide, and Philbert, the man who killed her husband and sons. Maria introduced Philbert to Wilkens as her valued family friend, Wilkens said.
“All I could see in Philbert was a killer, a rapist,” Wilkens said as he described his internal conflict. “I could not see him as anything but that.”
However, Wilkens said that Maria reframed Philbert and showed empathy for Philbert’s experiences as a prisoner.
“She steps out of the spotlight. She puts Philbert in the spotlight,” Wilkens said. “That must be one of Maria’s superpowers. She could step out of the spotlight and put the guy I could only see as a killer in the spotlight and start to practice empathy with him.”
Wilkens emphasized how the Rwandan genocide was not a story of “tribal hatred and conflict that eventually reached the level of genocide.” Instead, it was a coup, he said.
“The architects of the genocide had to work hard to break the bonds between the Hutus and Tutsis,” Wilkens said. “When you speak the same language, you go to school together, you go to church together, you drink beer together, you do business together, of course, you’re going to fall in love. You’re going to build relationships.”
In some cases, these existing relationships saved some Rwandans from the genocide. Even being a part of a soccer team was the difference between life and death, according to Wilkens.
“So many people survived because of their soccer mates, those bonds of that teamship of that team and that sport together,” Wilkens said.
However, the extremist government and orchestrators of genocide laid waste to many of those relationships. According to Wilkens, many were not strong enough to survive the country’s violent divide.
“They are creating and constructing the enemy. It doesn’t happen overnight in Rwanda,” Wilkens said of the extremist group trying to figure out a way to orchestrate the country’s divide. “If they married each other by the thousands, it’s hard to build a case that this is built on hate between tribal groups.”
“This was a coup,” Wilkens said. “This was an illegal seizure of power. One of the first actions of that extremist government was to eliminate anyone that would stand in their way.”
What was the difference between relationships that survived and those that the genocide destroyed? People who commit violence during genocide may be using their “downstairs brain,” Wilkens said.
According to Wilkens, the concept of the upstairs and downstairs brain is another way of framing the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex. The amygdala is responsible for our fight-or-flight response, and the prefrontal cortex is responsible for creativity, empathy and critical thinking. Wilkens proposed that this model may explain why many people in Rwanda resorted to senseless violence, especially since the country was on edge after being driven through countless wars.
“Different things happen that can cause us to just go for survival,” Wilkens said. “We fire those pathways about scarcity not enough; it’s no wonder that people seem to be on edge.”
Wilkens said mindfulness was the best way to make it to the “upstairs brain,” like Maria was able to do when she empathized with Philbert.
Mindfulness is how the Rwandans restored relationships with one another after the genocide, even going as far as being lifelong friends with people who killed their families, Wilkens said. They even implemented it in their justice system, he added.
Gacaca courts, or community courts, are a form of restorative justice implemented after the genocide where prisoners stood in front of the community, confessing and answering questions to the family and friends of the victims, according to Wilkens. It is an alternative to punitive justice.
“It was a restoring of humanity,” Wilkens said. “The incentive for the perpetrator was that you could get your sentence reduced and it was a pathway home. The incentive for the survivor was that you could learn the truth, which was really important.”
A student who attended the event was able to learn about how he could implement restorative practices into our justice system.
William Evans, a senior from E.O. Smith High School, is a “restorative diversion team” member. According to Evans, his team focuses on implementing restorative justice practices in our justice system in Storrs. He hopes to collaborate with Wilkens.
“He obviously has extensive experience with the implications of restorative justice,” Evans said.
In 1994, Wilkens was one of the only two humanitarian workers who refused to leave Rwanda as thousands of UN soldiers fled during the Rwandan genocide, according to the University of Connecticut Human Rights Institute.
The event was sponsored by UConn Global Affairs, the Dodd Human Rights Impact and the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life.
