YCC… an acronym I simultaneously love and hate. In my two years as Pierson Senator, I’ve had quite a journey with the organization. I’ve wanted to reflect on my time, so let’s get to it! 

I’ve served with two YCC administrations — and while they each approached YCC differently, they both strongly opposed Yale’s disregard for student welfare. There’s a common misconception: that YCC doesn’t care. Both YCC administrations put in hours upon hours of work per week, meeting with administrators whose humanity has been warped by the large paychecks the institution sends them for paying lip service to student concerns.

As a new Senator, you learn something quickly: if it costs money or is internal-facing, Yale will probably ignore your demands. I’ll never forget sitting at a town hall in 2021, where an administrator outlined the cost for free laundry on campus at around $300,000 annually — a miniscule sum compared to Yale’s budget — and then proceeded to ignore my requests for free and clean laundry. This isn’t to say that my first year in YCC wasn’t without victories. For example, a ridiculous 25 percent room fee if you decide to take a semester off was removed. Doing this didn’t lead to loss in Yale’s income, so it was an easy change. And when administrators made COVID-19 decisions back in Fall 2021 without considering travel costs for FGLI students, I organized YCC members to challenge these inconsiderate decisions. We convinced Yale to create a student-led COVID-19 committee, which administrators did listen to — for the Spring 2022 semester. But, despite these wins, it sometimes felt like YCC was screaming into the void, with administrators unwilling to work on significant issues.

None of this changed in my second year. Yale administrators are still making Yale even more difficult for low-income students: kicking them out of their organizations’ offices and ending on-campus storage all in the name of  “equity.” It’s a curious sight to see an institution with a $41.2 billion endowment refuse to expand institutional support to low-income students, refuse to fund a lawsuit against CSC’s gross — literal and legal — negligence of our laundry machines, and refuse to pay for meals during Spring Break — but easily find money for ornate dinners. Until I co-led an initiative with Ryan Smith and Alex Sundberg demanding that to-go containers be returned to dining halls, Yale was going to discontinue the practice because it got “too expensive.” Yale as an institution is so driven by its finances that it forgets the people who sustain it.

I could ramble on about my frustrations with Yale. However, I want to talk more about YCC itself, and highlight my fellow Senators, E-Board members and friends who motivate me to have faith in YCC advocacy. Early on, I decided I didn’t want to sit back, go to meetings and call it a day. Nor did some of my fellow 2024s. Sure, some of our ideas were a bit unrealistic, but we cared. We were guided by passionate E-Board members. I began to use my social media platform to highlight my work, posting on my Instagram story and tweeting the efforts I was pursuing. I ran on the idea that YCC must improve its communication with students and I think I helped us do that. The YCC is not a government, nor is it the be-all-end-all of decision-making. We can yell at the Yale administration as much as we want, but its bureaucracy kills almost all of our ideas. Unless we are ready to donate millions, our voices don’t seem to matter. As the YCC, we must rally campus frustration to show administrators that we as a student body demand more.

The Senate — and YCC as a whole — made a lot of progress this year. It’s been refreshing to see new Senators take charge on issues we failed on last year. As a seasoned Senator, I led the laundry charge — it still fascinates me that I needed to beg for a simple conversation between Yale and CSC to occur — and although it hasn’t yet led to free laundry, it has set the stage for demands and negotiations for the future. The group of Senators I work with have real passion for change, with laundry and other issues. They’ve passed proposals for stipend fundings that help FGLI students like me, challenged administrators and showed me that there’s still hope for student advocacy.

My time in YCC has been both inspiring and frustrating, but I’m hopeful for the future. Next year, YCC will have choices to make — especially on how it presents itself and challenges administrators and the institution they represent. Although I will no longer be a Senator, I fully believe that Julian Suh-Toma and Maya Fonkeu have the vision to platform students and demand more from Yale. Their leadership in YCC for the last two years speaks to it: when I was asked to work to get Narcan on campus, I turned to Julian, who quickly organized with student groups and we both pushed, successfully, to fund the first effort on campus to get Naloxone available. I trust Maya because she has been actively working with Julian to make dress clothes more affordable for low-income students, like me. Their work in YCC speaks volumes about their desire to make life better for the student body, with or without the administration. Both of them have built amazing coalitions of students, groups and communities, whose input they listen to and then center in their advocacy, never fearing to challenge inequities on campus. They know what YCC needs and have the platform — a realistic platform — to accomplish it. With Julian and Maya at the helm of the organization, I have faith in the YCC being a successful advocate for students.

I am proud to endorse Julian and Maya and cannot wait to vote for them as my next YCC President and Vice President.

VIKTOR KAGAN is a junior in Pierson College who has served in the YCC for the 2021-22 and 2022-23 terms. He proudly organized the Laundry Advocacy Committee and on FGLI issues to ensure students are heard by administrators.