While the long-awaited improvements are a milestone for the building, the shutdown has generated mixed reactions, primarily concerns about Gryphon’s future, and the social, financial and emotional void its absence may leave across the graduate and professional student community.

“This isn’t just a bar,” said Julia Simon GRD ’27, director of Gryphon’s. “It’s a space that enables interdisciplinary friendships and helps students find their footing at Yale. It’s the heartbeat of the G&P experience.”

But beginning in January 2026, that heartbeat will go quiet.

The renovation, driven by advocacy from Gryphon’s and the Graduate & Professional Student Senate and approved by the University, will add an elevator to make all of 204 York Street ADA and code-compliant. Construction, overseen by the University, will also include the addition of gender-neutral bathrooms, refurbishment of existing bathrooms, new signage, new handrails and improved lighting. These improvements aim to ensure that students with mobility challenges can fully make use of all public floors of the building, Simon said.

However, Gryphon’s staff and GPSS leadership say the closure risks becoming more than just temporary. Without the space, revenue or staffing infrastructure to operate in any capacity during the shutdown, many worry that Gryphon’s may not reopen at all.

“The renovation could very well occur — and the pub and community center that currently inhabit this space may not,” said Simon. “We are at a tipping point.”

In 2024 alone, the pub hosted more than 50,000 student visits and 285 private events, including recruitment mixers and cultural showcases, in addition to Gryphon’s own events like karaoke and trivia nights, according to Simon. Its signature “cover waiver” program, which offers unlimited entry for a fixed annual fee, drew over 2,500 students.

A win for accessibility

The elevator project represents a critical victory for Gryphon’s Pub and GPSS, which has advocated for facility and accessibility upgrades at 204 York since at least 2012. 

The building presents many concerning accessibility issues that prevent many disabled G&P students from using the space dedicated to them. For example, the Senate chambers on the third floor are currently only accessible by two flights of stairs, excluding wheelchair users or others with low mobility from key spaces where meetings, storage and programming occur.

“If a person who uses a wheelchair were elected GPSS President, they would never be able to actually use the GPSS Chambers under their purview, and frankly, it was an embarrassing realization that GPSS continued to operate meetings in the Chambers until 2020,” said Sara Siwiecki GRD ’26, GPSS Public Relations Committee Chair. “General Senate meetings are open to all graduate and professional students to attend, so our space must be accessible to all students.”

In 2020, during the COVID-19 shutdown, the GPSS shifted meetings out of the Chambers and into accessible areas of Gryphon’s Pub and revised its bylaws to allow hybrid participation.

However, 204 York Street remained ADA noncompliant.

“Given that Yale has limited space and there have been previous reports of student organizations losing space from Yale buildings, we did not have the choice to ask to move to a different, accessible building. 204 York St was also designated by Yale as a Graduate & Professional Student Center since the 1970s, so we strongly preferred to continue our operations at our long-time home,” said Siwiecki.

With the renovation now on track, GPSS and Gryphon’s are celebrating a win they believe will benefit the building’s users for generations. 

Still, Siwiecki also acknowledged that the renovation’s benefits come with unintended consequences. 

“We are working actively with Gryphon’s to ensure the Pub can come back better than ever,” she said. “Yale has an old campus, and 204 York St. is not the only building with major accessibility needs, but GPSS and Gryphon’s are proud to have advocated for this improvement and for Yale to be making this a priority.”

Student-run but not University-funded

The mixed reactions come in light of the unintended consequences of the pub’s student-led structure, which makes its operations especially vulnerable during a prolonged closure. Unlike typical student organizations, Gryphon’s uses profits from sales to subsidize liquor and space rental costs, host events and employ students. It manages its own insurance, liquor license, payroll and utilities. 

The University has emphasized that while it provides rent-free access to 204 York, it considers Gryphon’s programmatically independent, meaning it is responsible for sustaining itself without institutional financial support.

“After COVID, the hardest part wasn’t reopening,” said Traci LaMoia GRD ’24, Gryphon’s finance manager. “It was rebuilding staff, culture, and community from scratch.”

Simon worries that history could repeat itself, especially since the University has declined to provide bridge funding, alternate venues or logistical support for temporary pop-up events during the 2026 renovation, despite appeals from GPSS and Gryphon’s leadership. 

Simon reflected that Gryphon’s staff members feel frustrated that, after years of asking the University to address the building’s accessibility issues, they are now finally doing so with little to no consideration for the impact on the Gryphon’s community.

“The university is investing in the building and in accessible community-building for G&P students,” Simon said. “But whether Gryphon’s reopens to welcome that community inside the building or returns is not their concern.”

Under current plans for the renovation, Gryphon’s stands to lose their ballroom stage and sound booth to make room for the elevator shaft — a blow to the pub’s ability to quickly transform the space for flexible event programming. Additional fire safety upgrades threaten to eliminate liquor storage space and soda distribution lines.

The physical changes will likely reduce the pub’s overall capacity and constrain the type and size of events it can host.

“We’ve gone from being able to throw everything from quiet gatherings to wall-to-wall dance nights to having to rethink every square foot,” Simon said.

LaMoia highlighted her worries about longer lines, lower occupancy thresholds and overall reduced revenue.

However, the most immediate impact may be financial. According to LaMoia, Gryphon’s employs around 30 graduate and professional students, most of whom earn an average of $900 per month. The bar’s flexible nighttime hours make it uniquely compatible with students’ academic schedules.

“Gryphon’s has allowed me to actually put money towards my student loans and live more than paycheck to paycheck,” said Anthony Isenhour GRD ’26, who serves as Gryphon’s inventory manager. “I will have to weather the gap with a significant loss of income. As a PhD student, I at least can rely on my stipend, but other staff members who are in Yale’s professional schools will not be so lucky.”

With no transitional job placement or University financial support on the horizon, staff are bracing for income loss.

“With the closure, we have to explore other options for work, ” Isenhour added. “But nobody hires for just seven months.”

Lives and livelihoods

For many of Gryphon’s staff, the shutdown is not just a professional challenge: it’s a personal upheaval.

Oved Rico MUS ’25, a bartender and karaoke DJ at Gryphon’s, joined the team to break out of the social bubble of his program at the School of Music. He said the job allowed him to meet classmates from across the University — students studying law, engineering, public health and more. Now, as he contemplates extending his master’s degree, the closure is forcing him to weigh whether staying in New Haven is financially viable.

“Gryphon’s helped make grad school livable,” said Rico. “I came from the arts school, and this was my way to meet people in medicine, law, business, architecture, people I’d never cross paths with otherwise.”

“This was my main income,” he said. “Without it, I might have to leave.”

Staff also emphasized the pub’s social utility. Gryphon’s serves as a launchpad for communities across otherwise siloed schools. They noted the pub as a place for celebrating milestones, letting off steam and forging connections that outlast programs.

“Every graduate student has a Gryphon’s story,” Isenhour said. 

Ren Stevens, who currently works as a bouncer at Gryphon’s, told the News that she fears that, between the loss of employees to graduation and the loss to other gigs during the renovation, “we won’t have the personnel or generational knowledge to revive the bar and train a full new staff.”

The loss also threatens student life more broadly. Gryphon’s is the only dedicated space on campus where students from all graduate and professional schools can socialize under one roof on campus. Its staff says the pub offers something that no departmental happy hour or formal school mixer can replicate: a low-stakes, welcoming environment where spontaneous connections are the norm.

“I feel like what Gryphon’s does for the graduate school community is so expansive that it’s hard to briefly encapsulate,” said Stevens. “Our lounge is booked out nearly every single night as a space to host different Yale affinity group meetings, birthdays, thesis defense parties, and more. We host dozens of recruitment events each year for different graduate programs and I’ve heard from current students that Gryphon’s was one of the most memorable parts of their recruiting experience.”

An uncertain future

GPSS and Gryphon’s are now exploring contingency plans. GPSS Vice President Saman Haddad LAW ’26 is leading a team of student analysts from the School of Management in conducting financial modeling. Alumni engagement efforts are also in the works. Staff hope that increased attendance this year and donations can help them build a cushion before the shutdown.

Yet, amid the uncertainty, staff remain hopeful.

The renovation marks a huge step in the accessibility of Yale’s campus and the inclusion of disabled students in the G&P community. The improved building will make Gryphon’s Pub a more welcoming place and somewhere that all G&P students can work together to grow and thrive.

“We’re excited about the accessibility gains. We just want to make sure Gryphon’s is still here to welcome everyone back,” Simon said. “We need the community’s support now more than ever.”

All Yale graduate or professional students are automatically awarded membership at Gryphon’s.

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The Yale Youth Poll, an undergraduate-led initiative affiliated with the Yale Institution for Social and Political Studies, surveyed 4,100 registered voters between April 1 and 3, including an oversample of 2,025 voters aged 18 to 29. The Spring 2025 poll examined public opinion on a wide range of topics — from foreign policy to gender identity — but three themes emerged with particular force: attitudes toward protest rights, views on the role of universities in national politics and taxing wealthy university endowments.

“The poll is focused on what topics are relevant to right now,” said Yale Youth Poll Director Milan Singh ’26, who is also an Opinion Editor at the News. “Questions on whether international students should be deported, or have their visa revoked. We wanted to gauge what people feel about federal funding cuts to universities, whether they should issue political statements or positions on social issues, whether people feel positively or negatively towards the Ivy League or other elite private universities.”

The poll reveals overwhelming youth opposition to deporting international student protesters, broad support for taxing large university endowments and greater comfort with universities taking political stances than older generations.

The novel findings reveal a generation skeptical of institutional neutrality and wealth but still invested in the moral and political roles of education, challenging assumptions about how Gen Z thinks and what they expect from the institutions that educate and govern them.

Students reject deportation of campus protesters

According to the poll, 78.7 percent of young voters opposed deporting international students who participated in campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza. That figure stood at 62.4 percent among all voters. The survey questions were drafted in direct response to public figures — most prominently former President Donald Trump — who have called for revoking visas of student demonstrators.

“This is an issue that’s become highly visible, but it hasn’t been widely polled,” Singh told the News. “We wanted to measure just how unpopular this idea is, and it turns out, among young voters, it’s extremely unpopular.”

The poll found opposition to deportation extended across party lines within the under-30 demographic, with fewer than 10 percent of respondents saying they supported the policy or were unsure.

“It really shows how widespread the opposition is,” said Arjun Warrior ’26, a data scientist for the Yale Youth Poll. “Young voters are under-polled, but they’re also the next generation of long-term voters. Understanding where we stand on these issues matters for the future of politics.”

The result comes amid renewed scrutiny of universities’ handling of free speech and protest rights, with campuses across the Ivy League and beyond facing pressure from donors, lawmakers and activists to crack down on pro-Palestinian activism.

Mixed feelings on elite universities, but broad support for endowment tax

Even as elite institutions like Yale become focal points in the national culture war, the poll reveals a more complex picture of public sentiment toward higher education.

Among voters under 30, elite private universities such as the Ivy League received a net favorability rating of +7, with 42.6 percent expressing favorable views and 35.5 percent unfavorable. But among all voters, the rating was slightly negative, at -4.2.

“There’s a baseline of skepticism about elite universities, especially outside the youth cohort,” Singh said. “We see some real dissatisfaction — especially when it comes to how universities use their wealth.”

56.1 percent of young voters — and 55.8 percent of all voters — said they supported a 21 percent tax on annual profits from university endowments exceeding $10 billion. Such a policy would directly affect institutions like Yale, whose endowment currently stands above $40 billion.

“There’s a tension here,” said Jack Dozier ’27, deputy director for the Yale Youth Poll. “Young voters still believe in the value of higher education, but they’re increasingly skeptical about whether elite institutions are living up to their responsibilities.”

Disagreement on institutional neutrality

As universities grapple with whether — and how — to speak out on political issues, the Yale Youth Poll captures a sharp generational rift on the question of institutional neutrality.

While a majority of voters over 30 — by a 13-point margin — said that universities should not publish statements on political or social issues, young voters took the opposite stance: 48.9 percent supported universities taking public positions, while 42.9 percent opposed and 8.2 percent were unsure.

“We’ve seen this debate play out here at Yale with the news of the establishment of the President’s task force on addressing why people distrust Ivy League universities,” said Singh. “There’s a real disconnect between how young people and older Americans think about the role of the university.” 

Other notable findings

The Yale Youth Poll also explored a wide range of topics. Notably, respondents were split on foreign aid to Ukraine, with young voters nearly evenly divided between supporting continued aid — 42.7 percent — and ending it — 43.8 percent. On gender identity, young voters were more supportive of transition-related healthcare access for teenagers than the general public and more inclusive of transgender athletes in youth sports.

One of the poll’s experimental findings came from a messaging A/B test. When progressive homelessness policies were framed as “human rights,” support dropped by 22 percentage points — suggesting that values-based rhetoric may backfire among some voters. 

Another experiment found that when respondents were given basic facts about federal revenue and spending, they became slightly more willing to support cutting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security and more open to increasing corporate and consumption taxes. 

The poll also probed attitudes toward the judiciary. While young voters were more likely to view the Supreme Court as politicized, 75.7 percent still said the president should be required to obey court rulings — outpacing support among the general population, which stood at 67.4 percent.

“That’s an interesting tension,” Singh said. “Even though young people are less likely to see the Supreme Court as a neutral institution, they’re more likely to believe the President must abide by court rulings.”

Youth divided within

Perhaps, most surprisingly, the poll revealed stark divides within the youth vote itself. While voters aged 22–29 favored Democrats in the 2026 congressional elections by 6.4 points, those aged 18–21 leaned Republican by 11.7 points — an 18-point swing within a single generational bracket.

The finding complicates the narrative of Gen Z as uniformly progressive.

“In a time where the world is changing at such a rapid pace, we hope to provide clear and unbiased survey information that answers some of the big policy questions that have been put out there since November of 2024,” said Dozier. “Especially in an era where politics have changed so much since our last poll, there’s not a lot of strong polling data about young Americans’ public opinion now.”

The Yale Youth Poll has a margin of error of ±1.9 percentage points for the full sample and ±1.8 for the youth subsample. Results were weighted to reflect U.S. demographics.

As the Yale Youth Poll prepares for hopefully their next round of data collection in fall 2025, the student researchers say they hope their work will help fill a void in public opinion research.

“Politicians often promise things to young voters and reach out to young voters, but they can’t do that if they don’t have an understanding of what young voters believe and where young voters are,” said Warrior. “That’s why polls like this are really important because they provide insight — albeit imperfect insight, but insight nonetheless — into what young voters believe.” 

The Yale Youth Poll was first conducted in Fall 2024.

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Balsirow, a Kalmyk-American linguistics major, is one of the first Yale students to study Kalmyk — an endangered Mongolic language spoken by an ethnic minority in Russia — through Yale’s Directed Independent Language Study program, or DILS. She describes the experience of practicing Kalmyk with her grandmother as “lighting up her face” and recalls hearing the Kalmyk proverb growing up: “If you forget your mother tongue, it’s like forgetting your own mother.”

This spring, Kalmyk joins Māori, Newar (Nepal Bhasa) and Assamese as new additions to Yale’s DILS program, which allows students to pursue languages not formally taught at Yale through structured, one-on-one sessions with native or fluent speakers known as Language Partners. 

The program has become a lifeline for students looking to reconnect with their heritage, preserve endangered tongues and engage in scholarship that would otherwise be impossible without linguistic access. 

Despite federal funding cuts to many language programs across the country, DILS remains intact and growing at Yale, with plans to add Hmong to its slate in Fall 2025.

“Students in the DILS program work with a highly qualified language partner to advance their proficiency in a Less Commonly Taught Language in support of their academic work,” said Adam Stein, program manager at Yale’s Center for Language Study. “Many of the students are also studying an endangered language and have become part of a broader global community working towards the preservation of disappearing languages and their respective cultures.”

For Te Maia Wiki ’28, who is Ngāti Porou and Te Aupōuri from Aotearoa, New Zealand, and Yurok from Northern California, DILS has offered a rare opportunity to reconnect with reo Māori, the language of her father’s family.

“Both of my paternal grandparents were reo Māori teachers,” she said. “Speaking Māori is a significant part of how my family communicates. There are so many Māori beliefs and protocols that don’t translate easily into English. DILS gave me a formal structure to practice the language — but more importantly, it gave me space to tap into Te Ao Māori, the Māori worldview.”

Wiki worked with Amelia Butler, a Māori educator, to prepare for a Māori-led environmental conference in New Zealand. Their sessions began and ended with karakia, a type of prayer, and incorporated not only environmental vocabulary but also dialectal phrases from her grandmother’s region.

Despite its cultural and academic value, however, DILS does not count for Yale course credit — a fact that Wiki and other Indigenous students have called into question. 

Wiki noted that the DILS does not fulfill Yale’s language requirements, nor does it appear on a student’s transcript. While some students receive credit for remote languages, Wiki believes that many students are deterred from studying indigenous, endangered languages due to the lack of credit received.

“It’s ironic for Yale to create spaces to learn ‘rare’ native languages, and take pride in that, but not recognize this learning as legitimate,” Wiki said. “How does this perpetuate harmful ideas about what languages and cultures are allowed in academic institutions?”

Kalmyk, a Mongolic language with roots in Central Asia, is also a new addition. Balsirow, a linguistics major, joined DILS in the fall to deepen her connection to her Kalmyk heritage. Raised speaking Russian in Kalmyk diaspora communities, she remembers childhood phrases in Kalmyk — but never had a chance to study the language formally until now.

Balsirow added that DILS is helping them learn not just about vocabulary or grammatical structure, but also about her own cultural identity.

“My language partner, Chagdyr, is a certified Kalmyk philologist and incredibly knowledgeable about culture and tradition,” Balsirow said. “We go beyond grammar and syntax — I’m able to learn about Buddhist teachings, Mongol history, and sayings my mom used when I was little. It’s helping me make sense of things I’ve heard my whole life.”

Her language partner, Chagdyr Sandzhiev, a Kalmyk philologist, sees the partnership as part of a much larger mission.

“Kalmyk carries the ancient history of the Mongol nomads … and embodies Buddhist teachings,” he said. “The importance of this program lies not only in acquiring language skills but also in immersing students in the culture, traditions, and worldview embedded in the language.”

For Rijan Maharjan GRD ’18, the Newar language is an emotional touchstone. After first joining DILS as a student a decade ago, he returned in 2024 as a language partner when he learned students were interested in learning and preserving his native tongue.

“Young people, including some of my cousins, are speaking less and less Newar,” he said. “It saddens me to see such an integral part of our culture receding. So when [Adam Stein] contacted me saying students were interested in Newar, I said yes. The more speakers, the better.”

Maharjan called DILS “an amazing program that few schools offer” and said its impact stretches far beyond Yale’s campus. “These endangered languages hold the key to unique cultures, traditions, and knowledge in the smallest corners of the world,” he said. “Having the ability to tap into that also helps Yale maintain its high standing in research.”

Tim Frandy, a Sámi and Finnish-American scholar currently based at the University of British Columbia, echoed that sentiment. A North Sámi language partner since 2022, Frandy emphasized that Indigenous languages are not just modes of communication but a way of spotlighting knowledge systems often left out of Western academia.

“There are no regular course sequences in any Sámi languages across North America,” Frandy noted. “And yet, these languages carry traditional knowledge and relationalities — not to mention thousands of years of history. You can’t just translate words and expect meaning. Language teaches you how to see the world differently.”

And while the program continues to add new offerings — with more languages under consideration for next fall — students and partners alike hope institutional support will follow.

“We all deserve the opportunity to learn about our own histories and cultures,” Frandy said. “Universities have a responsibility to make that possible.”

The Yale DILS program was founded in 2001.

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All three of the day’s races were moved to the Cooper River due to concerns over the water levels on the Schuylkill River.

Racing against Ivy League rivals Penn and Columbia, the Bulldogs battled a stiff crosswind throughout the morning but were unable to hold off a fast-moving Penn squad, which took first place in all three Varsity Eight events.

The day opened with a scrappy contest between Yale’s third varsity eight and Penn’s third and fourth boats. The Quakers’ 3V jumped to a half-length lead within the first 20 strokes, taking advantage of early struggles by the Bulldogs as they adjusted to the wind. While Penn’s 4V faded quickly, the 3V extended their margin through the middle of the course.

In a fierce final sprint, the Elis surged back to overlap, but Penn’s early cushion proved decisive at the finish line as they crossed with a time of 6:29.10. Yale followed shortly after with a time of 6:32.82 and Penn’s 4V crew with a time of 6:57.57.

In the second varsity race, a bumpy start put the Y150 behind both Penn and Columbia. But the Bulldogs quickly regrouped, rowing through Columbia by the 750-meter mark and turning their attention to the leading Quakers. In the final 600 meters, Yale mounted a strong charge — but once again, Penn responded, holding off the Bulldogs by about a length and finishing with a time of 6:15.30. Yale followed at 6:19.85, and Columbia trailed at 6:24.29.

The marquee event, the varsity eight race, delivered the most dramatic duel of the day. Penn established an early lead, building nearly half a length on Yale by the midway point. But in the third 500, the Bulldogs launched a powerful move, narrowing the gap to a single seat and pulling ahead of Columbia.

With fans lining the riverbank, it looked as though the final sprint might deliver a photo finish. Instead, Penn unleashed a final burst of speed in the closing meters, crossing nearly a length ahead of Yale, with Columbia finishing by open water.

With their varsity eight victory, Penn retained the Marcellus Hartley Dodge Cup — an annual prize since 1955 — and secured the Colgan Cup for overall team points, a trophy first introduced in 2022.

The Bulldogs return to their home waters in Derby, Conn., on April 19 to host Dartmouth in their only home regatta of the season. The Durand Cup will be on the line.

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3,599 students — a little over half the undergraduate population — used the site and submitted around 669,000 votes before the site closed down for voting Thursday night. Each user was limited to 100 votes per day, and rankings fluctuated throughout the week, powered by an Elo algorithm similar to chess scoring systems.

“I like building things that people use,” Addison Goolsbee ’25, a computer science major who created the website, told the News. “I thought this would be something people liked — and a lot of people did like it. A lot of people didn’t like it, though. That was an interesting dynamic.”

Though Goolsbee said he initially wanted to build a platform ranking the prestige of Yale clubs, he pivoted to people, finding the idea “way more fun.”

He described Rank Yale as “part prank, part social experiment,” referencing inevitable comparisons to Mark Zuckerberg’s 2003 Harvard platform, Facemash. Goolsbee said he was careful to avoid privacy violations, allowing students to opt out on the first day — a feature he said was ultimately used by 122 students.

“I got a few comparisons with Facemash and Zuckerberg. I mean, like, obviously that was part of the inspiration,” Goolsbee told the News. “It wasn’t actually how I came to the idea, but when I came to the idea, I realized, oh, that’s super similar. I can use that for some design tips.”

Zuckerberg appeared before the administrative board on account of “breaching security, violating copyrights and violating individual privacy.” Goolsbee told the News that he was very careful in ensuring his platform did not violate the data usage policies.

“Some people got really obsessive,” Goolsbee said. “But that made the final result kind of the ultimate joke: the number one person was me.”

Despite its tongue-in-cheek tone — including a satirical  “sandwich mode” feature for turning student profile photos into an image of a sandwich — the site stirred deeper conversations about Yale’s social dynamics.

“To be honest, I did not expect to be ranked. I’m technically not a current sophomore — I’m on a gap — and I am not involved in many things on campus right now,” said Iris Henry ’27, who was ranked first in the class of 2027. “I also think Rank Yale as a whole is a pretty questionable idea. Even if it was not to be taken seriously, I think it can feed into some of the more toxic dynamics that already exist here.”

Henry, who never visited the site while it was live, also called Rank Yale “kind of like Tinder for popularity.”

“Even if it wasn’t meant to be taken seriously, it can feed into the more toxic dynamics that already exist here,” she said. “Yale can feel elitist — especially socially. A lot of clubs are built around exclusivity. Combine that with the academic pressure, and people start tying their self-worth to things like success or social validation.”

Henry added that many students didn’t take the platform seriously and got a laugh from seeing their names — or their friends’ — appear. But she still questioned the motivations behind the project.

“I still find myself questioning the motivation behind creating a platform centered around ranking peers,” said Henry. “It reinforces the idea that your value on campus can be quantified or voted on.”

Henry also acknowledged, however, that at the same time, there wasn’t a “single type” of person ranked. She noted that the top 100 lists had students from all sorts of communities, which “maybe helped show that these surface-level things aren’t as important as we think.”

Others noted that the inclusion of Yale ID photos in the voting process may have introduced visual bias.

“I think having pictures made students more likely to vote for people they found attractive, even if they didn’t know them,” said Jack Carney ’28.

Goolsbee agreed that profile images influenced votes — but not always in predictable ways.

“I’ve met people who always voted for someone with a photo as a kind of protest,” he said. “It wasn’t always about attractiveness.”

He also pointed out that Yale’s ID photos, unlike curated social media pictures, were “basically mugshots,” which made the platform feel less performative. “That’s part of why I think this ended up being less toxic than Facemash,” he said.

Now that the site has shut down, Goolsbee said he has no plans to relaunch it.

Five members of the current Yale Daily News Managing Board were among the Top 100 in their respective classes.

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You hosted your 19th birthday in a friend’s dorm on the fourth floor of Lawrence Hall. The cake was too sweet, the candles melted into the icing and the room was too full but just full enough. You looked around — faces warm with laughter, crammed into the common room, leaning against door frames, lying on Twin XL beds, dancing between silver streamers and taped-up string lights and newspaper stars — and you thought, maybe this is it. Maybe this is what joy feels like: slightly sweaty and barefoot in a dorm room with people you met six months ago who somehow already knew the shape of your laugh.

You’d wander Old Campus at night, tipsy on cheap wine and giggles, wandering paths that led both everywhere and nowhere. You met people in the shadows of Durfee, people you hadn’t seen since Camp Yale, and you hugged like long-lost siblings. Club initiations happened here, too, in the early days of fall: paper bags over heads, paper crowns, paper-thin bravado. High heels sinking into damp grass. Someone’s hand steadying yours as you laugh too hard to even stand straight, gripping arms in a line of absurd solidarity, drops of liquor dripping down your chin. You re-enacted battle scenes from Endgame and clambered up the statue of Abraham Pierson: dramatic, ridiculous, victorious. You swapped stories outside L-Dub, swapped secrets in the glow of street lamps, swapped numbers you might never text but needed to have anyway. You watched societies gather, secret rituals unfolding like theater on the first Thursday of the year.

You walked those paths drunk, happy, exhausted, glitter still on your cheeks from God-knows-what. You walked them sober, silent, phone pressed to your ear, calling home for the first time from the bench outside Bingham, your mom’s voice crackling with static and comfort.

You drank hot cider at Fall Fest as the air turned sharp and golden, and when spring came, you would end the year the way it began: on Old Campus, drunk at Spring Fling, screaming lyrics into the night. Here, in the mud and snow, you ran through the rain until your jeans were soaked up to the knees. You let yourself lie on picnic blankets as the last of summer waned. Let champagne wash over you in bursts of celebration. 

You stumbled out of GHeav with mozzarella sticks and dreams, wandered home from the YDN building, frozen fingers clutching a camera. You cried in front of Linsly-Chittenden Hall — once because you failed a quiz, twice because you thought the world hated you as the cold pricked your skin and the wind slapped your cheeks raw. You once slipped on ice just outside of the High Street gates and bled a little. Red streaks on white snow. The scar is still there, faint on the back of your hand, a quiet reminder that even here, you fell and got back up.

You took photos of orange leaves drifting down and thought, “God, even the trees at Yale perform.” You handed out hot chocolate during the first-year snowball fight, camera slung across your chest, cup after cup passed to people you barely knew but already loved. You danced barefoot in Vanderbilt until 2 a.m., met a boy on skis once at 3 a.m., and never thought to ask why. There were pre-games in L-Dub and post-games in Welch, and debates whispered furiously underneath blankets and between mouthfuls of popcorn and pretzels. You even watched Ben Shapiro on someone’s laptop in Durfee and whispered commentary to the person next to you, both of you too tired to care, too intrigued to look away.

You stood in the middle of Old Campus once, confessed your dreams like the prayers nobody taught you how to say. You saw your friends in Farnam drape Christmas lights out their windows, spelling out JE LUX in neon green. You watched the sunset from the third floor of Phelps Hall, the sky turning to fire behind Harkness Tower, and thought — how can anything this beautiful ever last?

You even memorized the time it took to walk from the fifth floor of Bingham to the second floor of L-Dub — four minutes, if you managed to cross Old Campus uninterrupted. You learned to send your friend the “I’m here” text one minute before arriving so you wouldn’t have to linger at their entryway, waiting in the cold. These tiny rituals — they made a home out of something so temporary.

And living in Bingham tower was like being Rapunzel, high above the chatter — in a room so small you could touch both walls with your arms outstretched, fingertips brushing chips of paint. But you filled it anyway and made it yours — newspaper clippings, posters, someone’s law school degree, and a handkerchief from a regatta tucked behind the mirror, smelling faintly of salt and sun.

And when the courtyard below emptied into silence, you slipped out of Old Campus like a secret, past midnight, with the lamps flickering and the gates yawning open. You walked fast and quiet through the streets. Your breath rose in soft clouds in the cold air, your coat clutched close, heart pounding — not out of fear, but out of possibility. 

Every inch of Old Campus has held you. It has held your hangovers and your heartbreaks with cupped hands, your half-written essays and your full-hearted friendships. It has carried your voice, echoing laughter and late-night confessions caught between the bricks, the moss and the stones. It holds every version of you: drunk and delirious, lost and found, laughing and crying and standing still in the middle of it all, feeling the chill seep into your bones.

And now, you walk those same paths again, the ones that go everywhere and nowhere, and think — maybe this is still it. Maybe this always was it. This is the closest your class will ever live together again. Will ever be together again — at least until you return for commencement. 

Before everyone scatters to their own residential colleges, and after that, to lives that stretch further and further apart. But for now, for this brief moment in time, you are here. Together. And that is enough.

The post An Ode to Old Campus appeared first on Yale Daily News.

It happens everywhere once you start looking. In living rooms, in bedrooms, in courtrooms and in libraries that only exist on soundstages. Somewhere in the background, somewhere in the script, someone’s always going to Yale.

But for Brian Meacham, the Managing Archivist of the Yale Film Archive, those flashes of recognition weren’t just trivia. They became a project twelve years in the making.

“I’ve been working on it probably for almost as long as I’ve been at Yale, which is 12 years, just trying to find as many references to Yale in film as possible,” Meacham told me.

That obsession recently became “That Whole Yale Thing,” Meacham’s sprawling, loving, occasionally absurd compilation of every conceivable on-screen Yale reference drawn from over 200 films, from indie and Hollywood blockbusters alike, from blink-and-you’ll-miss-it name-drops to entire plots revolving around our hallowed New Haven home.

In one moment, Phil Hartman and Nora Dunn set down their phones, dial clicking; in the next, the footage cuts to Tina Fey picking up hers. Indiana Jones struts through Sterling Memorial Library. Robert Downey Jr. shelves books there. Across a hundred fragmented moments, Yale becomes a story people tell over and over again.

And fittingly, for a project about cinematic ephemera, it began not in a movie theater but online.

“There was once a website that was a searchable database of subtitle files,” Meacham explained. “And so you could do a keyword search for any word you wanted.” Naturally, he searched for Yale. “That’s where a lot of these started popping up,” he recalled. What started as a casual hunt for Easter eggs soon turned into something else entirely: a cinematic obsession, a digital scrapbook, a wildly specific labor of love — stitched together over late nights, odd hours and the rare quiet moments of an archivist’s life.

The film — which Meacham produced independently but connected to his work through the Yale Film Archive  — wasn’t even fully assembled until last month. For years, the clips sat dormant, scattered in folders, waiting. Finally, the long-running project found its moment among the festivities of the University president’s inauguration weekend.

What struck me most, watching the montage of film clips in the lecture hall of Sterling library, was how the image of Yale — its cultural meaning — has shifted subtly over time. In the old black-and-white films, Yale feels almost mythic, wrapped in this air of untouchable prestige and effortless belonging. It’s less a place you get into than a place you simply arrive at — if you’re the right kind of person. 

But in more recent films, that illusion begins to break down. The idea of Yale still carries weight, but it’s tinged now with distance, with improbability, even with exclusion. Movies like “Lady Bird” or “Do Revenge” capture that — Yale becomes not just a symbol of success but of longing, of something barely out of reach. It’s no longer assumed; it’s aspirational. It’s not just a place people go — it’s a dream people chase and often lose.

Meacham noticed this evolution, too. Early black-and-white films, he pointed out, regarded Yale with a certain “reverence” — a place that served as a finishing school for American boyhood where, in his words, “you send boys to turn them into men.” But as cinema crawled into the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Yale’s meaning warped.

“It maybe has become more unattainable or more of a kind of lofty goal as opposed to just sort of the next step in the stages of your life,” Meacham reflected.

In other words: Yale, in the old movies, was inevitable. In the new ones, it’s impossible.

There’s also something strange — even disorienting — about watching Yale exist outside of itself. 

That tension — between inevitability and impossibility — thrums at the heart of “That Whole Yale Thing.” The film revels in absurd contrasts: a scene of a lovestruck high schooler dreaming of attending college on the East Coast, a shot of Matt Damon looking forlorn inside the tomb of Skull & Bones, wide-eyed freshmen in black-and-white musicals singing “Boola Boola” and drunken alumni stumbling through reunions praising the Elis. Yale appears everywhere and nowhere, both a real university and a Hollywood mirage.

On campus, for students, the University is bricks and bodies and dining hall rushes; on screen, it becomes something else entirely: a symbol, an aesthetic, a punchline.

Sometimes, Yale is not just an image but a sound.

“There’s a whole section with the Boola Boolas,” Meacham said. “It’s hard to imagine a world where this was the case, but it certainly was, I think, in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s, that those were internationally known songs.” “Boola Boola” and “The Whiffenpoof Song,” he explained, weren’t just campus traditions — they were mainstream pop culture, musical shorthand for college itself, and Yale in particular.

So when Clark Gable casually riffs “Boola Boola” while recounting his days as a silent movie pianist, or when Humphrey Bogart’s character belts it out because he canonically went to Yale, it’s not a coincidence: it’s recognition. In one rather jarring scene, a character in a “Tarzan” film sings about “the Elis” for no discernible plot reason. “I can’t for the life of me figure out why she would be singing that,” Meacham laughed. “But she is. It’s actually ‘Boola Boola’ — I checked.

This commitment to detail extends even to the structure of the film itself. Some clips featured quotes, like “The greatest battlefield is the Yale Bowl” — taken directly from a silent-era title card. The movie it belongs to, “Hold ‘Em Yale,” holds special significance for Meacham. 

“It was the first film ever shot at the Yale Bowl,” he said. “A sort of goofy romantic comedy” about an Argentine kid who comes to play football for Yale — and one of Meacham’s rediscoveries. “I helped bring that back from New Zealand,” he explained. “It was a somewhat lost film — no copies of it existed in America.” The Yale Film Archive now holds a print, which it screened during the Bowl’s 100th anniversary.

In moments like that, Yale becomes more than a backdrop — it becomes the story.

This was, in part, Meacham’s intent: not to create a perfect portrait, but a sprawling mosaic. “I will say, there are a few things I left out that were perhaps a little bit less than flattering,” Meacham admitted with a laugh. “I didn’t want this to… I didn’t, you know… it’s for a celebratory moment.”

Still, he hinted that an uncut, more irreverent version might exist one day — complete with “a little bit more warts and all,” and, crucially, “a little bit more swearing.”

Hollywood’s Yale is also notably a fantasy world governed by its own tropes: future presidents, tortured geniuses, bad-boy legacy kids, tweedy professors and gothic libraries that beckon like cathedrals. Watching Meacham’s compilation feels like peering into a national subconscious; the stories people like to tell about Yale say as much about America as they do about the University itself.

“It wasn’t until last month that I actually started working on putting the film together,” Meacham said. But when he did, patterns started to emerge almost naturally. Characters dream of getting into Yale. They triumph, they fail, they cheat their way in. They sit in its courtyards, linger in entryways and fall in love and sometimes — inevitably — commit crimes in its libraries.

What “That Whole Yale Thing” captures so vividly is Yale’s peculiar position in the cultural imagination: always a little larger-than-life, always caught somewhere between nostalgia and satire, status and absurdity. It’s not Harvard, but it’s always paired with Harvard. “There’s a whole section where it’s just like, Harvard, Yale, Yale, Harvard,” Meacham joked.

Part of the fun is also how wrong it all is. Movie Yale is impossibly glamorous. It looks like it was filmed at Harvard or Oxford half the time. Nobody mentions the Bow Wow lines or the wind slapping your cheeks raw as you walk up Science Hill or the cursed vending machines in Bass Library. And yet, against all reason, it still tugs at something emotional, even vulnerable, in the viewer who has been lucky enough to get to know Yale.

There’s a certain pride in seeing your school live rent-free in society’s consciousness for decades. But there’s also a deeper melancholy, the realization that Yale on screen is not your Yale, but someone else’s dream — or nightmare.

Maybe that’s the strangest part of it all: watching a place you know intimately get turned into a symbol for things far bigger, far messier, and far more universal than your own four-year experience. Yale, according to the movies, isn’t really about Yale at all. It’s about ambition. Nostalgia. Status. Romance. Escape. Everything people want and fear when they think about elite institutions.

Perhaps the most poignant moment in the film comes from the 1946 Cole Porter biopic “Night and Day,” which closes on a monologue about Yale’s timelessness: how the University “has gone unchanged,” how the buildings might grow differently, but “the feeling of Yale” endures. Of course, the character says “men” — the college was all-male at the time — but the sentiment lingers: What does it mean to belong to a place whose image has endured for centuries, even as its reality shifts?

Today’s Yale is more diverse, more complicated and more public-facing than its cinematic mythology. But that mythology still haunts us — in the navy blue merch, in the movie scenes, in the YALE crewneck worn by a villain or a dreamer or a side character in love.

To watch “That Whole Yale Thing” is to feel this double-vision acutely. Yale is the dining hall you eat at every day, the morning alarm set for your 8 a.m. library shift, the lingering conversations on the couch in your common room. And then, of course — in a hundred scattered movie scenes — someone knocks on a bedroom door. Someone walks in, wearing a sweatshirt. YALE.

And for a second, just a second — you feel it too.

The dream. The ache. That whole Yale thing.

The post That whole “Yale thing” appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The platform, passed at the GPSS’s annual corporation meeting on April 3 and sent in an email to all members of the graduate and professional student body the following day, codifies a set of core policy values intended to guide the External Affairs Committee, which leads the Senate’s legislative advocacy on local, state and federal issues.

“Instead of having to go back to the Senate for explicit approval every single time, this platform gives the committee the ability to act quickly if an initiative falls within our stated priorities,” said Chrishan Fernando GRD ’25, the External Affairs Chair of the Senate. 

According to Fernando, the idea was inspired by established platforms from graduate student governments at peer institutions like MIT, whose Graduate Student Council maintains a similar platform to streamline its policy work.

The policy platform, described by GPSS President Alex Rich GRD ’27 as a “regularly revised, non-exhaustive list of GPSS values,” serves as a roadmap for the Senate’s advocacy efforts. It outlines the body’s official stances on issues affecting Yale’s 8,750-plus graduate and professional students — from affordability and housing to mental health and academic freedom.

Rich emphasized that while the platform was not created solely in response to recent campus or national events, it better equips the GPSS to act decisively amid uncertainty.

Fernando emphasized how the policy platform is structured as “a list of sorts” of the GPSS’s priorities regarding “external policy.”

Before the platform was established, Saman Haddad LAW ’26, who serves as the Vice President of the GPSS, noted that the GPSS was required to wait to discuss particular initiatives at a meeting of the full Senate, which currently convenes biweekly and thus notably slows the advocacy process. 

Now, the Senate can reference the policy platform — ensure that a particular piece of legislation fits under a stated priority — and expedite efforts to work on the initiative without an explicit vote of approval from the Senate.

The platform lays out a series of positions the Senate “strongly supports,” ranging from concrete material needs — like access to affordable healthcare, childcare, housing and transportation — to broader commitments to student rights, workplace safety and civic engagement.

The Senate also staked out positions on national higher education policy, opposing any measures that would disrupt students’ work or studies and explicitly condemning the deportation or detention of enrolled students.

Rich also underscored that the platform is a living document — one that will be revisited, revised and reaffirmed every year through an open and participatory process designed to be transparent and inclusive and encourage active student participation.

According to the new bylaw language passed at the April meeting, revisions must be presented to the Senate by the External Affairs Chair within the first three sessions of each academic year. Senators — and students with help from their elected representatives — can propose additions or changes during this process.

While recent debates over higher education policy have amplified the need for coordinated advocacy, Fernando noted that the platform has been months in the making. Initial conversations began last fall, but procedural rules meant the Senate had to wait until its annual corporation meeting, the only time bylaws can be amended, to formally establish the platform.

In its inaugural iteration, Fernando said, the platform focuses on “core, active policy priorities” that the Senate is already working on, but future revisions may expand the scope or sharpen the Senate’s positions.

In addition to adopting its own platform, the GPSS also voted last week to sign onto the National Association of Graduate-Professional Students Joint Statement — a document affirming support for graduate and professional student success and well-being nationwide.

This joint statement outlines a shared commitment to supporting graduate and professional students in four key areas: equitable and sustainable funding, cultivating a campus culture of belonging, protecting the rights and well-being of international students and upholding academic freedom and research independence.

Raekwon Fuller DRA ’27, an at-large GPSS senator involved in shaping the policy platform, said that signing the statement was an important gesture of solidarity, though he emphasized the need for accountability.

“I voted for us to sign the statement, as having accountability and solidarity in these times are extremely important,” Fuller said. “However, I did ask to ensure that we aren’t signing something once and then just unquestioningly allowing NAGPS to change the statement and keep our signature, but that we resign and recommit at each new version of the statement.”

Still, Fuller said, both the NAGPS statement and the new GPSS platform send a clear message that the Senate remains committed to representing and advocating for all graduate and professional students at Yale.

The GPSS has recently collaborated with the Yale College Council on a letter to University President Maurie McInnis, encouraging Yale to adopt a university-wide anti-doxxing policy. According to the April 4 email, University leadership confirmed receipt of the letter on March 25.

The Senate has also allocated funds to address immigration crises and deportation threats on campus, distributed “Know Your Rights” resources regarding interactions with ICE and created a federal policy engagement guide to encourage students to contact elected officials.

The Graduate and Professional Student Senate was founded in 1972.

The post Yale GPSS adopts first-ever policy platform, clarifies advocacy priorities appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The anniversary drew over 100 attendees, including about 40 alumni of the YPU’s seven constituent parties, which span the political spectrum from the Party of the Right to the Party of the Left. Over drinks and speeches, alumni swapped stories of debates past, revisited cherished Union traditions and reflected on the enduring role the YPU played in their Yale experiences.

Leo Greenberg ’26, current president of the YPU, described the weekend’s event as a testament to the Union’s staying power.

“It was quite powerful to hear the stories of these past Union leaders,” Greenberg told the News. “The more things change, the more things stay the same. Electoral machinations, guest cancellations and absurd speeches are clearly not new to the Union.”

Founded in 1934 by former University President Alfred Whitney Griswold ’29 GRD ’33, the YPU was modeled on the famous debating unions of Oxford and Cambridge and has served as Yale’s forum for political discussion and oratory.

Today, the YPU consists of seven political parties — Federalist, Conservative, Tory, Progressive, Independent, Party of the Right, and its newest addition, the Party of the Left. The Union holds a weekly parliamentary-style debate every Tuesday featuring prominent guest speakers, while each party organizes its own internal debates and social events throughout the semester.

The Union’s guest speakers over the decades have ranged from presidents to philosophers — among them Ronald Reagan, Joe Biden, Lady Bird Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Noam Chomsky and Theresa May, who spoke earlier this semester.

For Greenberg, the most striking takeaway was how deeply alumni remain committed to the YPU’s core mission of fostering spirited debate across ideological divides.

“It was quite endearing to see how committed these alums still are to some of the bedrock stuff we pride ourselves on: befriending people with radically different views, tackling big and pressing issues without fear and keeping traditions alive,” Greenberg said.

The YPU’s history has been shaped as much by its internal dramas as by the public figures it has hosted. From its founding during the Great Depression to its fraught debates over World War II isolationism, from its near-collapse in the 1970s to its explosion of membership under former YPU president Fareed Zakaria ’86, the Union has repeatedly reinvented itself while remaining a constant presence on campus.

In the 1980s, Union membership swelled to over 1,000 students — nearly a quarter of Yale’s undergraduate population — making it one of the most vibrant debating communities in the nation. Prominent alumni include conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr. ’50, former Secretary of State John Kerry ’66 and former National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy ’40.

Alumni and current students recalled both the contentious debates and unlikely friendships that defined their time in the Union at Saturday’s event.

Miles Kirkpatrick ’27, former YPU historian, emphasized the centrality of institutional memory to the Union’s identity.

“The YPU is a Yale institution, a fact best communicated by its history,” Kirkpatrick said. “Visions of the YPU’s past have sustained and motivated its members, giving us something to strive for in rough times.”

A former chair of the Progressive Party, Sean Pergola ’24 described the reunion as both nostalgic and affirming — evidence of an institution whose traditions, even after COVID disruptions, have been maintained.

Pergola noted how difficult and long recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic was, as the YPU atmosphere, with all of “its intricate traditions,” was difficult to translate into a “Zoom call.” They recalled the YPU feeling “a little anemic” during those years, and noted that it has taken a while for the organization to get back to its full strength.”

For Rek Lecounte ’11, a former member of the Independent Party, the Union offered not just ideological sparring but a rare community.

“Especially because I came in from a place — I’m an army brat from the South — not a lot of people from my background came here,” Lecounte reflected. “So it was a nice way to make friends.”

Lecounte, recalling one of his favorite YPU debates, pointed to a night with former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, who he remembered as making the audience “laugh as much as any guest ever did.”

For Alexander Martone ’10, who served as Union president during its 75th anniversary, the YPU was nothing less than a home at Yale.

Martone, a member of the Party of the Left during its early days, remembered a particularly vibrant period of debate and cross-party friendship during his time in the Union.

“There was a lot of energy and a lot of good debates, both at the Union level and at the party level,” Martone said. “A lot of friendships across the different parties.”

As the YPU looks ahead to its next chapter, Greenberg said he hopes the traditions celebrated on Saturday — and the community they foster — will endure.

“I am quite proud that so many alumni still think of the Union as a place which realizes its loftiest aspirations: open debate, the embrace of controversy and camaraderie which transcends political affiliation and ideology,” Greenberg said.

The Yale Political Union had 262 active voting members in Fall 2024.

Correction, April 9: Lecounte was a member of the Independent, not the Conservative Party.

The post Yale Political Union celebrates 90 years of debate and dialogue appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Hosted by Asian Crossroads at Yale, the Office of International Students and Scholars and the Persian Students Association, this year’s event transformed Kroon into a kaleidoscope of color, sound and culture, uniting Yale’s Central Asian, Iranian and Middle Eastern communities — and drawing students from beyond New Haven.

Nowruz — meaning “New Day” in Persian — is celebrated across a vast swath of the world, from Iran and Afghanistan to the Caucasus, Central Asia, South Asia and parts of Eastern Europe and the Balkans. For Umid Usmanov ’26, co-founder of Asian Crossroads at Yale, bringing Nowruz to Yale meant far more than just celebrating tradition — it meant creating home.

“Hosting Nowruz was incredibly meaningful to me,” Usmanov said. “It felt like bringing a piece of home to a place that, while intellectually stimulating, often felt very far from where I was raised.”

Growing up in Uzbekistan, Usmanov remembers Nowruz as a time of community and warmth — extended family gathering to cook plov and sumalak, children flying kites in the courtyard, elders telling stories over green tea. 

But as an international student at Yale, the absence of those rituals became a source of homesickness — and inspiration.

“That homesickness, especially during my first year at Yale, was the driving force behind founding Asian Crossroads,” Usmanov explained. “Together with my good friend and co-founder Jed Devillers, we started the group to fill a two-fold gap on campus: representation and understanding.”

Saturday’s event reflected that vision. Live performances spanned the region’s artistic traditions: a tar solo by an Iranian musician, a set by Kyrgyz singer Aidai and a dynamic folk dance by Datkayim, a Kyrgyz troupe specializing in traditional choreography. Tables overflowed with regional delicacies — including plov and sumalak — offering attendees a taste of home or, for many, a first encounter with Central Asian cuisine.

Yet the impact of Nowruz at Yale extended far beyond its performances or food.

For Diana Zhumalieva, a Kyrgyz graduate of Wesleyan University and a graduate intern at the OISS, the celebration stirred powerful memories of home and of childhood rituals she longed to recreate.

“Growing up, Nowruz was my favorite celebration,” Zhumalieva reflected. “We woke up early, deep-cleaned the house, and my mother would burn a small branch of evergreen pine on a plate and go from corner to corner, letting the smoke cleanse our house from bad spirits and energy.” For her, Nowruz was about generosity, forgiveness and letting go of negativity — entering the new year with a new soul.

After years of celebrating Nowruz alone in the United States, Zhumalieva said Yale’s event offered something rare: belonging.

“In the last five years, I didn’t have a chance to do Nowruz in a big community,” she told the crowd gathered at Kroon Hall. “But today, as I look at all of you coming together to celebrate Nowruz, I am filled with joy and gratitude.”

The feeling of forging community in diaspora resonates far beyond Yale. Across the Ivy League, the recent growth of Central Asian student populations has led to a surge of cultural organizing.

At Brown University, Komron Aripov, a senior and founder of Central Asian Students @ Brown, noted the changing demographics on campuses like his own.

“In my year, I’m the only Uzbek as a senior,” Aripov said. “But now, we’re finally at the point where there’s critical mass to start a club. It’s such a large region of the world, but there’s so little representation.”

Similarly, at NYU, sophomore Meruyet Tailanova founded the Central Asian Hub this semester to connect students from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and beyond.

“I just remember my freshman year, searching for Kazakhs — just to feel like I fit in,” Tailanova told the News. “Nowruz is such a big thing in Kazakhstan. I came all the way from New York to Yale just to see other Central Asians, eat good food and celebrate together.”

Their visit to Yale’s Nowruz celebration, Tailanova added, was a reminder of what student organizing can make possible: “It’s not just about Central Asians; it’s about sharing our culture with everyone.”

For Usmanov, that longing for connection — and for cultural visibility — is what gives Nowruz its enduring power.

“[Nowruz] symbolizes renewal, growth and new beginnings,” Usmanov said. “Nowruz reminds us that no matter how long the winter, spring always returns, bringing with it hope, resilience and the chance to begin again.”

Saturday’s celebration was also made possible with the support of numerous campus partners, including the Asian American Cultural Center, the Middle Eastern and North African Cultural Center, the Central Asia Initiative at the MacMillan Center and the School of the Environment’s Asia Student Interest Group.

The Central Asia Initiative was launched by Yale’s MacMillan Center in 2024.

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