Unite Yale is a coalition of student groups organizing to build student power and solidarity.
On Friday, March 27, 2015, students rallied on Cross Campus for issues such as the renovation of cultural centers, the rising student contribution costs, mental health resources, and Yale’s refusal to divest from the fossil fuel industry.
A crowd forms on Cross Campus.
“We were just passing by and wanted to check this out! We’re actually grad students.”
– Ian Tuski
“The horn is called a shofar and its blasts are meant to serve as a call to one’s conscience and to inspire introspection and action. I thought it would be fitting to bring it to such a powerful social justice event.”
– Emmanuel Cantor
Various speakers present the issues.
“Would the elimination of the student contribution be a true victory if Yale Corporation continued to invest in fossil fuels (the effect of which is felt disproportionately by low-income communities)? Can Yale’s black students celebrate victory for the AfAm house fully if the well-being of our Asian-American peers continues to be neglected by the administration? No, and no. The strength of the solidarity between these intersections depends upon their necessity being felt equally.”
– Neema Githere
“For me, the rally represented and fulfilled a beautiful opportunity to demonstrate the inherent intersectionality of these issues to our administration and the rest of the student body and to make it clear that coalition-building is both possible and a reality.”
– Christopher Melendez
Dressed for the cold weather.
“I agreed with several of the causes promoted by Unite Yale, particularly the pressing need for mental health care reform, but remain skeptical of compiling them under the broad aegis of student power. In fact, the rhetoric of students rallying for power is dangerous, as it licenses a crusader mentality (satirized in the sign about the “righteous and wrong-teous”) that will hamper productive discourse. This is a problem with protest culture more broadly, and the CFF meta-protest was meant to start a conversation about that.”
– Alexi Sargeant
“Unite Yale allowed all those who have been silenced or marginalized at Yale, and all those who are fighting for justice for themselves and others, to believe that we do deserve better, that we do deserve a university that is accountable to us, and that we can come together to make that real.”
– Alexandra Barlowe
Students hold signs to pressure the administration.
“I believe that our cultural centers need more support, need drastic renovations to be accessible, and our ethnic study departments need greater hires and funding. I thought this rally was a true display of student activism and organization, it can be easy for us now to forget that so much of what we have was only because students in the past agitated for change, and so today’s rally was a reminder that we do have the power to make our vision of a better Yale a reality.”
– Austin Long
Join the movement here