Racial Justice & Equity

 

I want to go to a Yale where everyone, regardless of race and ethnicity, feels that this is our Yale, we belong here, and we are respected, supported, and loved. We know the problem. Next Yale and other activist groups have presented many solutions. Now we need to do the work to fix it. We need to expand ethnic studies, support the cultural centers, and make Yale a safe and welcoming place for all students of color.

Yale Should:

Ethnic Studies

  • Collaborate with the new Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration (RITM) to create a new academic program encompassing African American Studies, Latinx Studies, Native American Studies, Asian American Studies, and/or the study of indigenous, underrepresented, and unrepresented peoples. Yale is prepared to create a fifth special academic program, and it should consult students, particularly student leaders of color, to determine how it could best harness this new program to expand ethnic studies education, while not duplicating the jurisdiction of the ER&M major.

  • Create, at long last, an Asian American Studies major.

  • Construct a new building to house the new Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration (RITM), which is temporarily housed at the headquarters of the Ethnicity, Race, and Migration research office, to signal its commitment to the center. Alternatively, if the Center is housed in the old ER&M research office, Yale should ensure that the work of the ER&M research office continues to prosper at a suitable new location.

  • Incorporate significant student input into its faculty diversity initiative. Diversity among faculty is essential, and students can help the administration determine which kinds of diversity are particularly lacking.

Cultural Centers

  • Establish endowments at each of the cultural centers, and continue to increase their budgets so that they can hire more staff and expand their programming.

  • Establish a clear process for including student input in searches for new center directors and, where appropriate, center staff. The revolving door for deans in the cultural centers must end.

  • Establish funds in each of the cultural centers to be directed to intra-center events, to foster greater cohesion among the constituent groups of each center.

  • Establish a mental health professional in each of the four cultural centers, and increase the number of clinicians of color at Yale Health generally.

A Yale that is Safe & Welcoming for Students of Color

  • Rename Calhoun College. His life should be studied, but not celebrated.

  • Eliminate the title “Master,” as Harvard and Princeton recently did.

  • Publicize the mechanism for reporting incidents of bias and discrimination.

  • Release an annual report to the community, similar to the UWC semesterly reports on sexual misconduct, about the employment of the bias reporting mechanism.

  • Incorporate the new bias reporting procedure into orientation programming.

  • Include conversations and workshops about race, bias, and discrimination into Camp Yale programming for freshmen, similar to the consent workshops. Include students of color in the development of any such workshops.

What YCC Can Do:

The YCC must carefully consider its role in the pursuit of campus racial equity. The movement for diversity and inclusion, led by student activists independent from YCC, successfully brought to the attention of the administration, the student body, and campuses across the country the inequity that exists at Yale for students of color. The YCC must not co-opt or attempt to co-opt this movement, but it must work actively and constructively with it. At its best, the YCC amplifies the voices of student activists; it does not talk over them. To do this, the YCC should take the following steps:

  • Meet regularly with leaders from Next Yale, other campus activists, cultural center leadership, and other students of color, particularly women of color, to develop an understanding of how YCC can best support and advance the policy goals of the movement.
  • Ensure (a) administrative accountability and (b) successful implementation of promises. The YCC has unique access to administrators, and if student activists decide that partnering with the YCC, while maintaining their leadership of the movement, would be a constructive way to promote racial equity, the YCC can use its time with administrators to question them on the progress of their promises that they outlined.
  • Form a working group to monitor this progress, and report on (a) failures to meet deadlines, (b) inadequate allocations of resources, (c) backtracking on promises, and (d) insufficient student representation on committees and advisory groups that are formed. These are tasks that student activists can, of course, do themselves, but the YCC’s unique role as the liaison between the administration and students places it in a prime position to act in this role. For instance, the YCC could work closely with cultural centers to determine whether their new funding is sufficient to accomplish the reforms and improvements they want to make, monitor the speed with which the administration adds more mental health counselors of color, and gauge the quality of training for faculty on recognizing discrimination by comparing it to training at other universities.