Yale Daily News

On Thursday, Assistant Dean of Student Affairs Hannah Peck sent an email to student groups housed at 305 Crown Street — including The Yale Herald, The Yale Record and the Yale Political Union — informing them that they have until the end of the year to vacate their on-campus spaces. The building, which hosts 15 student organizations, will be converted into shared storage for multiple campus organizations.

In her email to students, Peck wrote that over 500 registered undergraduate organizations rely on Yale’s resources, and that the decision is an effort to optimize them.

“Some groups that used to require physical space for their work moved online during covid and are now often able to function digitally,” Peck wrote. “Shifting the on-campus spaces to shared storage space will benefit many groups and remove the inequities that were often attached to the assigning of offices or meeting rooms to specific, often older, student organizations.”

Peck added in the email that all registered student organizations will have access to meeting spaces through the Registrar’s Office, the residential colleges, the campus centers and the Schwarzman Center, and each group will be given one shelf in the 305 Crown storage room and swipe access to the space. She encouraged groups to consult with University Archives for items of historical value to the groups. 

In response to a request for comment, Peck forwarded sections of her emails to the News, adding that  “maintaining 15 rooms on campus for only a few of our 500 student organizations became an issue of equity” and that the change will “benefit” more groups.

In response to the email from Peck, student groups voiced concerns about the decision, claiming that they were not given enough input or warning about the decision. 

Arnav Tawakley ’24, who is involved with the humor magazine The Yale Record, told the News that the group primarily uses the space for working on the magazine, socializing and storage for print Issues and merchandise. He said the space is used for the Thursday “Happy Fun Time” event that provides an opportunity for socializing as a club while working on the magazine and is open to anyone on their email list of about 1,300 students. 

“Two Record freshmen from the class of ’14…were both assigned to ‘clean the office’ when their seniors noted a mutual crush,” Tawakley told the News. “The two are now married, and active Record alumni.” 

Tawakley raised concerns about the group’s ability to vacate the space entirely by the May 21 deadline. He noted that this date fell soon after the busy schedule of finals and reading period, when club members may not have time to sort through the archives, coordinate with the Yale archives and alumni and clean the space. 

“The Record would have been amenable to a discussion about ways it could democratize the use of its space, but was not given any warning, let alone room for dialogue,” Tawakley told the News. 

The Yale Herald co-editors-in-chief Leo Egger ’24 and Josie Steuer Ingall ’24 wrote in a joint statement to the News that losing their space would be “devastating.”

Steuer Ingall and Egger emphasized the imbalance that would be created were the News, which is housed at 202 York Street, to become the only campus publication with a physical office space. Unlike the publications located at 305 Crown Street, the News is financially independent of the University.  

“This decision to turn our offices into storage space helps no one. It threatens to destroy established bastions of creativity and learning on this campus,” Steuer Ingall and Egger wrote to the News. “Students need to reckon with a campus bureaucracy that is eliminating spaces of care and community in the name of relentless optimization, under the guise of equity.”

In a letter from the editors posted to the Herald’s website yesterday, Egger and Ingall asked students for their support in reversing the decision. The letter argued further that the equity argument was utilitarian at the expense of community and history. It pointed also to the inadequacy of the one-shelf storage areas which organizations would be granted.

As of 10 P.M. Monday night, a petition to “Save the Yale Herald” had garnered nearly 500 signatures.