Yet it doesn’t need to — nor should it — be this way. As drug use is becoming destigmatized and understood as not a criminal issue but rather a health and socioeconomic issue, Yale can and must do more to prioritize public health and prepare community members to respond. 

We write this piece to outline recommendations that we have kickstarted, in partnership with and inspired by Yalies who have been fighting for better drug policy and resource access on campus. Last year, after conversations with off-campus student groups that work on drug safety across Yale and New Haven, we proposed and passed a $2,500 funding bill in the Yale College Council, or YCC, Senate to purchase 25 boxes of Narcan from local pharmacies. These boxes were then provided to Students for Sustainable Drug Policy, or SSDP, at Yale to more adequately institute methods to train its students and staff with resources to reduce fatalities. 

Our project ran into many roadblocks. Then, Yale was not necessarily ready to accept the institutional burden, nor was it easy to purchase Narcan. Only one pharmacy — the Walgreens Pharmacy inside a Yale New Haven Hospital building — was licensed to prescribe one Narcan prescription per day, per patient. 

We weren’t deterred. Instead, we grabbed groups of friends to have multiple Narcan containers prescribed to us each day until we ran out of funds. The pharmacist was supportive of our efforts but was legally restricted in the amount of Narcan they could provide daily. We then gave the 25 boxes of Narcan, with two nasally-administered overdose-reversing treatments, to SSDP to distribute to students, off-campus groups and community spaces. 

Since spring 2023, the landscape of Narcan has drastically changed. In March, the Food and Drug Administration announced that Narcan would be available for purchase over-the-counter starting July 2023. In December, the Biden-Harris administration called on schools and institutions to have Narcan stocked and readily available. While we work closely with SSDP and Yale Emergency Medical Services, or YEMS, to ensure Narcan is available on Yale’s campus, it is time for Yale to shed itself of its War on Drugs mentality from 1990 and step instead into 2024: students, staff and faculty need and deserve training on administering Narcan — on campus, off-campus and beyond. 

Student initiatives and funding efforts can only function for so long. YCC’s budget is not large enough to train and supply every student with Narcan, and SSDP and YEMS are not expansive enough to train and educate everyone on the issue. 

The time for broad action and preparation is now. We must become proactive in preventing overdose, not reactive. Yale cannot wait for something to happen and realize it must meet the moment. By then, it’ll already be far too late.

We call upon Yale to take up the burden of safe drug education, overdose prevention and harm mitigation. It’s time to live in 2024 and ensure that every member of the Yale community has the means to protect strangers and loved ones from preventable death. Yale’s hierarchy must shift. We must strive to radically shift University policy to prioritize students and New Haven residents’ well-being over the protection of Yale’s image. 

JULIAN SUH-TOMA is a junior in Benjamin Franklin College and is president of the Yale College Council. Contact Julian at julian.suh-toma@yale.edu. 

VIKTOR KAGAN is a senior in Pierson College and chief of staff for the Yale College Council. Contact Viktor at viktor.shamis-kagan@yale.edu.

The post SUH-TOMA & KAGAN: Narcan can save lives. Why is Yale so slow to act? appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Today, over 50 student publications across the country will run this very column, which is  a declaration that our safety and livelihoods supersede special interests and the status quo. More than 140 student leaders, organizers and advocates are speaking with one voice, and we are speaking with clarity and conviction. 

The joint column onto which Maya and I signed is below:

_____________________________________________

Students are taught to love a country that values guns over our lives.

Some of us hear the sound of gunfire when we watch fireworks on the fourth of July, or when we watch a drumline performance at halftime. But all of us have heard the siren of an active shooter drill and fear that one day our campus will be next.

By painful necessity, we have grown to become much more than students learning in a classroom — we have shed every last remnant of our childhood innocence. The steady silence of Congress is as deafening as gunfire.

We will not wait for individual trauma to affect us all before we respond together — our empathy is not that brittle. Our generation responds to shootings by bearing witness and sharing solidarity like none other. We text each other our last thoughts and we cry on each others’ shoulders and we mourn with each other at vigils. We convene in classrooms and we congregate in churches and we deliberate in dining halls. We’re staunch and we’re stubborn and we’re steadfast.

Our hearts bleed from this uniquely American brand of gun violence. Yet, we still summon the courage to witness firework shows and remind ourselves that we love our country so much that we expect better from it. 

We believe that our country has the capacity to love us back. There are bullet shaped holes in our hearts, but our spirits are unbreakable.

History has taught us that when injustice calls students to act, we shape the moral arc of this country.

Students in the Civil Rights Movement shared their stories through protest, creating the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) that organized Freedom Rides, sit-ins, and marches. In demanding freedom from racial violence, this group’s activism became woven into American history. 

Students across America organized teach-ins during the Vietnam War to expose its calculated cruelties — in doing so, rediscovering this country’s empathy. Their work, in demanding freedom from conscription and taxpayer-funded violence, is intertwined with the American story.

This fall, UNC Chapel Hill students’ text exchanges during the August 28th shooting reached the hands of the President. The nation read the desperate words of our wounded community, as we organized support, rallied and got thrown out of the North Carolina General Assembly. We demanded freedom from gun violence, just as we have in Parkland and Sandy Hook and MSU and UNLV.

For 360,000 of us since Columbine, the toll of bearing witness, of losing our classmates and friends, of succumbing to the cursed emotional vocabulary of survivorship, has become our American story.

Yes, it is not fair that we must rise up against problems that we did not create, but the organizers of past student movements know from lived experience that we decide the future of the country.

The country watched student sit-ins at Greensboro, and Congress subsequently passed civil rights legislation. The country witnessed as students exposed its lies on Vietnam, and Congress subsequently withdrew from the war. 

In recent years, the country watched student survivors march against gun violence, and the White House subsequently created the National Office of Gun Violence Prevention on September 22nd, 2023. 

So as students and young people alike, we should know our words don’t end on this page — we will channel them into change. 

We invite you to join this generation’s community of organizers, all of us united in demanding a future free of gun violence. We understand the gravity of this commitment, because it’s not simply our lives we protect with prose and protest. It is our way of life itself. 

We will not allow America to be painted in a new layer of blood. We will not allow politicians to gamble our lives for NRA money.

And most of all, politicians will not have the shallow privilege of reading another front-cover op-ed by students on their knees, begging them to do their jobs — we do not need a permission slip to defend our freedoms. They will instead contend with the reality that by uniting with each other and among parents, educators, and communities, our demands become undeniable. 

We feel intense anger and frustration and sadness, and in its wake we search for reaffirmations of our empathy — the remarkable human capacity to take on a tiny part of someone else’s suffering. We rediscover this fulfillment in our organizing, in our community, in not just moving away from the unbearable pain of our yesterday but in moving toward an unrelenting hope for our tomorrow.

Our generation dares politicians to look us in the eye and tell us they’re too afraid to try.

Signed,

JULIAN SUH-TOMA is a junior in Benjamin Franklin College. He is President of the Yale College Council. Contact him at julian.suh-toma@yale.edu. 

The post SUH-TOMA: “We will not wait for the next school shooting” appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Dear President Salovey, Dean Lewis, Dean Quinlan, and the University, 

On June 29th, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision to strike down affirmative action in college admissions and reversed years of progress towards equity in higher education. 

We, as members of the Yale College Council, unequivocally condemn the Supreme Court’s decision to end affirmative action in college admissions. 

Affirmative action attempts to correct a legacy of racial discrimination in the United States. Yale, like the U.S., was founded on Indigenous land and constructed by slave labor. The university’s namesake is slave-owner Elihu Yale, who made his fortune as a colonial administrator of British-ruled India. While we cannot excise the darker parts of our past, we can strive to right the wrongs of the present. Affirmative action is not a perfect system, but its discontinuity is a pivot away from progress.

In his majority opinion, Chief Justice Roberts states that “students must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual – not on the basis of race.” Yet race is fundamental to the experiences of all students—especially those of color. Ultimately, this decision is only limiting the university’s ability to welcome students of the broadest range of backgrounds; it restricts the capacity to, as Roberts says, consider a holistic identity of students based on all of their experiences. 

The classes of 2025 and 2026 are the most diverse in Yale’s history, each composed of over 50% of people of color. Race is but one element of the kind of diversity that enhances our universities, from classroom discussions to student life. In the past decades, affirmative action has brought us not only a more welcoming Yale for those historically excluded, but a more enriching Yale for each and every person on campus. 

Along with President Salovey and Dean Lewis, we are committed to upholding diversity on our campus. President Salovey and Dean Lewis’ have noted that “Yale is committed to continue this journey [of increasing racial and socioeconomic diversity] and build on the progress we have achieved together.” In the previous visit that Dean Lewis made to YCC, he spoke of the Admissions Office’s work to prepare and adjust for the event that affirmative action would be  declared unconstitutional. Workshopping and informing the student body, applicants, and alumni of these alternative and equitable admissions policies is critical. 

We commend and share in these sentiments, but words must be accompanied by action. 

First, we urge Yale to take this moment to reconsider the role of legacy status in admissions. We are struck by the irony of continued consideration of an arbitrary privilege in the face of new restrictions in ensuring diversity on college campuses. A system that has, by and large benefitted Yale’s most fortunate communities further augments the inequities that this ruling has exacerbated. In the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years, both iterations of the Yale College Council Senate voted and resoundingly approved statements condemning the role of legacy in admissions.

Second, Yale must promise to remain permanently test optional, and strongly consider a shift to test-blind admissions. Standardized testing largely benefits upper class, white applicants who have the time, money, and resources to devote to its preparation and further homogenizes the applicant pool. 

Third, Yale administration must meet with student groups such as the Black Students Alliance at Yale (BSAY), Native and Indigenous Student Association at Yale (NISAY), Mecha de Yale, the Asian American Students Alliance (AASA), and the Middle East and North African Students Association (MENA). Moving forward, we must recognize the diversity that enriches this university has been the byproduct of decades of student organizing and activism. As President and Vice President of the Yale College Council, we promise to work with administration, the admissions office, and student groups who have long struggled for more just outcomes at this university to ensure equity and preserve racial diversity in admissions. 

Fourth, as threats against student diversity loom larger, Yale must take proactive measures to ensure that students of color have places of belonging on its campus. It must increase funding to existing cultural centers and take actionable steps towards granting MENA students their own house. While recent expansions for resources and space inside of the Asian American Cultural Center are steps in the right direction, they fall short of fully meeting the needs of MENA-identifying students. To ensure that they are truly represented on campus and are given ample resources and funding, MENA-identifying students, now more than ever, need their own cultural center.

The Supreme Court’s decision is a step backwards. Nevertheless, we are committed to ensuring that the progress Yale has made under affirmative action will continue without it. As our country slides backwards, we will move forward.

Sincerely,

Julian Suh-Toma and Maya Fonkeu 

Yale College Council President and Vice President

Undersigned:

Viktor Kagan, Chief of Staff

Ariane de Gennaro, Communications Director

Paola Flores Sanchez, New Haven Engagement Director

Youssef H. Ibrahim, Cultural and Religious Policy Director

Rosanna Gao, Business Director 

Jad Bataha, Former Business and UOFC Director

Mimi Papathanasopoulos, Health and Accessibility Director

Emily Hettinger, Senator from Pierson College

Ben Crnovrsanin, Senator from Berkeley College

Surabhi Kumar, Senator from Ezra Stiles College

Carter Dewees, Senator from Saybrook College

Andrew Alam-Nist, Senator from Grace Hopper College

Christian Baca, Senator from Timothy Dwight College

Orah Massihesraelian, Senator from Jonathan Edwards College

Chet Hewitt, Senator from Pauli Murray College

Celene Bennett, Senator from Timothy Dwight College

Jordan Romano, Senator from Trumbull College

Adnan Bseisu, Senator from Pauli Murray College

Reece Kirkpatrick, Senator from Silliman College

Josh Siegel, Senator from Branford College

Elizabeth Schaefer, Senator from Morse College

Ciara Lonergan, Senator from Morse College

The post YALE COLLEGE COUNCIL: Regarding the end of affirmative action appeared first on Yale Daily News.

College students across the country face barriers to accessing menstrual products, with one in 10 students reporting an inability to afford menstrual products each month. In addition to financial obstacles, the dynamic and stressful nature of college life can lead to unpredictable menstrual cycles that surface when students are far from home and their circles of support. This inaccessibility can lead to isolation, absence from classes and social engagements and greater self-reported rates of moderate or severe depression. Yale students experience this “period poverty,” a term used to describe the barriers to adequate menstrual products, education and sanitation. And yet, Yale is not doing nearly enough in response. So far, its approach has been patchwork and inadequate in meeting the needs of students. 

By failing to provide menstrual products in campus bathrooms, Yale is failing to keep up with its peer institutions. As the Yale Daily News recently reported, both Middlebury and Harvard have worked to provide access to menstrual products in campus bathrooms, with a number of other universities also working to expand access. Additionally, it is now required by law that all Connecticut public schools provide menstrual products in bathrooms. As a private institution, Yale should be held to the same standard, especially because it has the financial capacity to provide this impactful service to its students. The truth is that If Yale were primarily concerned with student dignity and equity, it would already have taken this common-sense step. 

Yale currently supplies menstrual products through the Office of Gender and Campus Culture. After the Yale College Council launched a pilot program in 2019 to supply menstrual products in residential college basements and entryways on Old Campus, Yale decided to sign on. While the OGCC purchases the products, Communication and Consent Educators are responsible for resupplying as needed. However, in this system, CCEs are expected to constantly monitor the supply of products, as there isn’t a reporting system for when products run out. The result of the decentralized nature of this restocking system is an inconsistent — and often lacking — supply of products across colleges.

To fill the gap that Yale has left, a variety of different student organizations have, at different times and to varying degrees, worked to keep campus bathrooms stocked with menstrual products. The Period Project, which is sponsored by the Graduate and Professional Students Senate, provided pads and tampons in the bathrooms in Sterling in 2019 and 2020, but it has struggled to supply products after a change in leadership. The YCC also recently sponsored the Yale Women’s Center with a grant to buy pads and tampons to supply to students. This stopgap measure, while effective, also demonstrates how far Yale has to come in improving equity on campus. Another effort currently underway is a YCC measure to install menstrual product dispensers at all dining hall restrooms, a pilot program that would improve access, especially for those who are far away from their residential colleges. However, despite full funding from the Yale College Council, we are yet to see residential colleges and Yale administration commit to this student funded and organized effort to expand access. 

On behalf of the Yale Women’s Center and the YCC, we demand that Yale do better. Yale should consolidate the supply of menstrual products to Yale Facilities, which already maintains campus restrooms. They would check the supply of menstrual products during their weekly cleanings and restock as necessary. While Yale’s response to this demand has been that “it’s a difficult demand to implement,” the University cannot use its own bureaucracy as an excuse to delay change. The responsibility for providing basic hygiene products should not fall on the students, and the patchwork system of student organizations such as CCEs, OGCC, Period Product should be united into an official Yale initiative. It is time that Yale answers the call to end “period poverty” on campus and shows meaningful support to its first-generation, low income and gender-minoritized students.

THEIA CHATELLE is a sophomore in Grace Hopper College. She is the Political Action Coordinator at the Yale Women’s Center and the Editor-in-Chief of Broad Recognition. Contact her at theia.chatelle@yale.edu

JULIAN SUH-TOMA is a sophomore in Benjamin Franklin College. He is the YCC Senator for Franklin and member of the Health and Accessibility Policy Committee. Contact him at julian.suh-toma@yale.edu

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