The respondents are registered to vote in 49 U.S. states, with 71 percent planning to vote through absentee ballots in their home states. Over 79 percent of respondents are certain they will vote, and 12 percent more will very likely vote. 

Almost 13 percent — or 124 students in a survey — will cast deciding votes in one of seven swing states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. 

82 percent of students intend to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris, compared to only around 8 percent who back former President Donald Trump. These numbers are similar for swing state respondents.

Only 18 respondents — under 2 percent — say they will vote for the Green Party’s Jill Stein. Around 4 percent are unsure whom they will vote for. 

Unsurprisingly, Yale students overwhelmingly identify as liberal and are affiliated with the Democratic Party. However, views slightly differ across gender, race, Yale school and major demographics. 

Women, Black and graduate students more liberal, engineering majors slightly less

Following a national trend, women at Yale are more left-leaning than men.

Similarly, 90 percent of Black students say they will vote for Harris. At a slightly higher rate than other groups, 10 percent of Hispanic student voters will back Trump. 

53 percent of Black students identify as very left-leaning, compared to around 40 percent among students in other racial demographic groups. 

Only around 26 percent of respondents study in one of Yale’s 14 graduate schools. Over 55.6 percent of graduate students identified as very left-leaning and over 30.6 percent as somewhat left-leaning, compared to 42.2 and 33.7 percent among college students, respectively. 

Among Yale College students, those in engineering majors are most conservative, with 16 percent voting for Trump and slightly more identifying as somewhat or very right-leaning. Majors were categorized according to Yale’s classifications.

Yalies pessimistic about the U.S.’s future

Almost 44.5 percent of respondents believe that the U.S. is moving in the wrong direction, compared to only 17.4 percent who think that the U.S. is moving in the right direction; 38.1 percent are not sure. 

The optimism level differs across groups. 

Slightly more Harris voters believe that the U.S. is moving in the right direction than Trump voters. 

54 percent of Black students think the U.S. is moving in the wrong direction, at a significantly higher rate than other groups. 

Almost half of Harris voters believe that she will win the election in November, while over a third of Trump voters believe that the former president will. 

Voters in Connecticut can register on Election Day at designated locations.

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Police officers told the group that they were dispatched because they received a call about a protest in the building and asked the students to leave, according to three students in the choir who were present at the rehearsal. Upon learning that the group was a student choir conducting a rehearsal, police officers left the building, according to the students. The group moved to an auditorium, where they continued the rehearsal, and shortly after performed in front of the protest outside.

“I feel like it was very irresponsible,” said Zada Brown ’24, the vice president of Yale Gospel Choir. “It just says a lot about Yale, the way that they were just willing to automatically criminalize students and call the cops on us.”

The singing group was practicing two songs, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” and “This Little Light of Mine,” when police officers entered the building. 

Brown said that upon entering the building, YPD officers immediately approached the group and told them to leave the space without asking whether the group was a Yale-affiliated organization. According to Brown, police officers told students, “You can’t be doing this here. You have to do this with everyone else.” 

Two more Yale Gospel Choir members, who requested anonymity for safety concerns, corroborated Brown’s account.

It was not until one Yale Gospel Choir member clarified that the group was composed of Yale students that YPD officers began to ask questions, Brown said. She said that the police officers immediately eased up and told the group that “someone told [them] there was a protest here.” 

According to three members of the Yale Gospel Choir, only a few students passed by during the rehearsal, and no one else was present in the lobby. 

When the News initially reached out to a University spokesperson, she said that Yale Police officers were patrolling the building due to the protest occurring at the intersection. 

“Yale Police officers checked the building to confirm that unauthorized individuals were inside,” the University spokesperson said. “They then cleared anyone from the building who was not there for work or academic reasons.” 

Police officers left the building immediately upon confirming that the group members were Yale students, according to Brown.

When the News followed up with the University spokesperson on whether Yale administrators called the Yale Police to the building, as one student who was present at the scene suggested, she wrote that the University “has nothing further to add” to the previous response. 

All of the members in rehearsal were students of color, which shaped how they experienced this encounter with the police, they said. 

“At that point, all the people who were there were Black or BIPOC, and so it was pretty scary just because they immediately walked in and were just, like, ‘You have to leave,’ watching us,” said one Yale Gospel Choir member. “The fact that there was no attempt to ask us what we’re doing or even like, try to like, de-escalate the situation, initially, was pretty scary.” 

Brown said that gospel music has been used in civil rights protests throughout history, and Yale Gospel Choir wanted to stand in solidarity with “all the students that are being really brave,” protesting in support of Palestine. 

“As a Christian organization, we stand for love, we don’t stand for hate,” Brown said. “I think what we’ve seen happening in Palestine is 100 percent what we’re against.”

Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall is located at 1 Prospect St.

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Holloway, like other figures on the News’ list, has strong ties to Yale and a robust track record of leadership posts in academia. However, his colleagues at Rutgers have raised concerns about his leadership.

Four years after receiving his graduate degree in history from Yale in 1995, Holloway joined the University as a faculty member before becoming a full professor in 2004, At Yale, Holloway became the second Black person to become Head of Calhoun — now Grace Hopper — College and was chair of the African American Studies department. In 2014, he became the first Black dean of Yale College. In 2017, Holloway stepped down to become provost at Northwestern University before being appointed the first Black president of Rutgers University in 2020.

Last September, the Rutgers University senate — which is made up of over 130 students, faculty, alumni and staff — passed a vote of no confidence in Holloway after a historic triple-union strike. Holloway, supported by the university’s board of governors, remained in the position. The News spoke to three members of faculty at Rutgers, who criticized Holloway for his handling of faculty unions and lack of communication with his university community.

Holloway declined the News’ multiple requests for comment. 

“He has consistently shown contempt for and disdain for the people who do the work of the university,” Jim Brown, professor of English at Rutgers, wrote to the News. “He has shown little interest in the working or learning conditions of students, staff, and faculty at all Rutgers campuses.”

Since the vote of no confidence, Holloway stopped showing up at University senate meetings, drawing the ire of some faculty members. 

Holloway’s desire to become the president at Yale has been “out in the open for months” among Rutgers faculty, according to one faculty member who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from the administration.

“He just seems to want to wash his hands at Rutgers and move on,” the faculty member said. “I think he would see Yale as the pinnacle of his personal achievements. So yeah, I don’t think he wants to stick around at this public university any longer than he has to.”

Rutgers faculty on strike

By last spring, faculty at Rutgers had been working without a union contract for almost a year. 

The main issue discussed during prolonged contract negotiations was the recognition of part-time lecturers, for whom the union demanded equal pay for equal work, according to Robert Scott, a Rutgers anthropology professor who also serves on the university senate. These efforts, he said, were met by “stonewalling” from the administration.

Jim Brown, a professor of English at Rutgers, served as president of one of the chapters of the Rutgers AAUP-AFT union until last year and sat on its bargaining team. According to Brown, Holloway’s administration did not take negotiations seriously.

“His administration’s inability to negotiate contracts is largely due to his willingness to allow a team of lawyers and bureaucrats to run the university,” Brown wrote. “He played no role in negotiations. I sat at the table for a year, and I never saw him.”

As the union contemplated striking, Holloway threatened to seek a court injunction to break the strike and force faculty back to work. When, on April 10, faculty went on strike, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy had to intervene, asking Holloway not to seek an injunction. Scott and Brown attributed his decision not to seek legal action to external pressure on the president. 

Scott recalled that at one point during union negotiations, Holloway created an anonymous survey form for students to report faculty members who failed to show up to class due to the strike. 

“This is especially important for the thousands of students who are finishing their academic careers at Rutgers and are only a few weeks away from earning their degrees,” Holloway said when he contemplated legal action against strikers. 

After five days on strike, with the governor’s mediation, the university achieved an agreement with its union, which the latter pronounced as its victory. The new contract, ratified by the university unions in early May, included a 14 percent raise for full-time faculty. Adjunct faculty — as part-time lecturers are now classified per the contract — now earn close to equal pay for equal work with full-time professors

However, Brown wrote that after the strike ended, the administration continued treating workers “with disdain,” citing the layoffs of adjunct faculty at Rutgers-New Brunswick’s writing program, who he said “worked at Rutgers for more than 40 years.”

“His administration is increasing class sizes to enact these layoffs, which is bad for students and faculty,” Brown wrote. “He would likely say that this is a financial decision made because of finite resources, but he never seems to care about those finite resources when it comes to funding athletics or the pet projects of administrators at all three campuses.”

No confidence vote in Holloway’s leadership

On Sept. 22, the Rutgers University senate expressed no confidence in Holloway in an 89-to-47 vote.

The decision came on the heels of the faculty strike, as well as a controversial decision in July to merge two of the university system’s medical schools and the ousting of the Rutgers-Newark chancellor in August.

When Holloway’s administration started the merging of two medical schools, many professors were “reticent or opposed,” Scott said Then, the administration ignored the concerns among faculty and senate’s request to pause the merger and proceeded with the plan.

Last August, Rutgers also announced that it would not renew the contract with Nancy Cantor, a chancellor of Rutgers-Newark, prompting a backlash from faculty. Despite Holloway’s announcement praising Cantor, the university administration never explained the reasoning behind their decision not to renew a contract with her.

The resolution of a vote of no confidence on Holloway  refers to Cantor as “a highly effective, popular, widely-respected and nationally recognized campus chancellor.” A faculty at Newark campus, who spoke on a condition of anonymity, told the News that faculty will “never ever forgive” Holloway for dismissing her.

Brown also criticized the president for overlooking the Rutgers-Camden campus, where Brown teaches. 

​​”He will talk about how many times he has visited the campus. He will say that he has not forgotten about us,” Brown wrote. “But the policies remain the same. The campus with the largest proportions of first-generation students and non-white students does not get treated equitably.”

Brown said that Rutgers never allocated resources to Rutgers-Camden and that the campus “never felt valued.”

Following the senate’s decision, Holloway stopped coming to senate meetings and sent a letter announcing a new model of University engagement where he would meet with students and faculty in small “salons,” which became the subject of a running joke among faculty members, according to Scott.

“It had an elitist ring to it,” Scott said. “Go to Yale, take your salons to Yale.”

Scott added that he’d meet the news of Holloway being named president of Yale as a sign of relief and a chance to start anew at Rutgers.

On Friday night, Holloway arrived for University President Peter Salovey’s farewell dinner at the Schwarzman Center — one day before the Yale Corporation’s April 20 meeting. Holloway said that he was attending the dinner to “honor” Salovey.  

If selected for the role, Holloway would become the University’s first president of color.

The post Jonathan Holloway could be Yale’s next president. Some Rutgers faculty would be glad to see him go. appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The University’s announcement comes after a months-long advocacy campaign — from various students and coalitions who favor divestment — that has culminated in both an ongoing sit-in demonstration on Beinecke Plaza, which drew about 150 protesters at its height, and an ongoing hunger strike with 14 student participants.

The University’s decision — which also included a commitment to divesting from assault weapons manufacturers that retail to the general public — was met with widespread backlash from protesters who have been demanding that Yale divest from military weapons manufacturers. Yale’s rationale is that military weapons manufacturing does not satisfy “the threshold of grave social injury, a prerequisite for divestment,” per the Wednesday release.

“I am disgusted and appalled by the [Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility’s] decision not to recommend divestment. How much death does Yale money need to fund before this genocide is considered a ‘grave social injury?’” Ky Miller YSE ’25 wrote to the News. “I truly hope that the ACIR will reconsider this decision in light of the ongoing social turmoil, violence, and death of the Palestinian people — social injuries that are a direct result of Yale’s investments in mass weapons manufacturers.”

Yale’s decision came on the same day as other advocates also expressed their opposition to divestment directly to the University. 

On Wednesday morning — before Yale released its announcement — Eytan Israel ’26 and other co-authors sent a letter to University President Peter Salovey in opposition to calls for divestment from military weapons manufacturing. 

Israel himself also circulated the letter among Yale affiliates to collect signatures. It received signatures from over 130 students and parents, alumni and faculty as of late Wednesday evening. 

An organizer who favors divestment — and requested anonymity due to safety concerns — added that since November, students have sent more than 2,000 letters to Salovey and the ACIR calling for divestment from military weapons manufacturers.

“Our position doesn’t require endorsing every targeting decision the IDF has made in Gaza; it doesn’t require supporting the structure of their campaign against Hamas; it doesn’t require supporting any policy of the current Israeli government,” Israel said. “Our position is based on the realization that the liberal democracies of the world – the U.S., Ukraine and Israel among them – face recurrent and serious military threats from their non- and anti-democratic neighbors and therefore require the means to defend themselves, and democracy itself, militarily.”  

Pro-divestment organizers intend to keep protesting

In the Schwarzman Center, where protesters temporarily moved from the Beinecke Plaza due to rain, student organizers read aloud the University’s statement on its decision while protestors chanted “shame.”

“What are we telling the trustees? If there’s no justice, there’s no peace,” protesters shouted. 

The University’s Board of Trustees, which made the decision following the ACIR’s review, will meet this Saturday. 

In a post on the Instagram account “Occupy Beinecke,” the protesters wrote that they intend to “continue to occupy” Beinecke Plaza until the trustees “themselves commit to disclosure and divestment or publicly justify their failure to do so.” The group wrote that they refuse to accept a decision from the ACIR — “a body with no decision-making authority.” 

The ACIR is an advisory body to the Yale Corporation Committee on Investor Responsibility — or CCIR — which consists of two students, two alumni, two faculty and two university employees. It does not have official authority to amend the University’s investment policies. According to the University announcement, the ACIR makes recommendations to the CCIR, which in turn advises the Board of Trustees. The Board makes the final investment decisions. 

“Our occupation has grown every day because the Yale community knows that the indiscriminate bombing of thousands of civilians constitutes ‘grave social injury’, even if the ACIR has convinced itself otherwise,” wrote Lumisa Bista ’25, one of the protesters. 

Disagreements over Yale’s involvement, Israeli right to self-defense

Organizers on both sides of the issue are divided on the extent of the University’s monetary investment in companies that supplied the state of Israel with weapons. 

According to Yale’s February 2024 SEC filings, the University holds over 6,400 shares of the iShares Core S&P Total U.S. Stock Market ETF, with a total value of around $680,000. It also holds 342,000 shares of Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets ETF, totaling over $14 million. Both the iShares ETF and the Vanguard ETF — which are exchange-traded funds with investments in a slate of various companies — can directly fund manufacturers that sell weapons to Israel, such as Boeing, or companies that operate in Israel’s defense and weapons manufacturing sectors, such as Larsen & Toubro Ltd. 

Yale publicly discloses 1 percent of its endowment investments, so the full extent to which the University has financial holdings tied to weapons manufacturers remains unclear. Even in that 1 percent, it is difficult to determine exactly how much of Yale’s investments directly reach such companies, as third parties manage both exchange-traded funds. 

To Samuel Rosenberg ’26, the student protests for the University’s divestment exaggerate the scale of the University’s investment in weapons manufacturing. 

“The degree of investment is fairly insignificant,” Rosenberg said. “So it’s sort of blowing out of proportion something that’s not actually of particularly large material consequence.” 

Rosenberg said that the University’s investments are several steps removed from the military aid Israel receives. 

“Yale has one ETF amongst thousands of holdings,” Israel added, referring exclusively to one of the at least two exchange-traded funds in which Yale invests. “This ETF has three companies, out of hundreds, that deal with the defense industry. Within that minuscule amount, an even smaller portion of this is manufacturing offensive weapons being used in the war in Gaza. If four degrees of separation from what some perceive as immoral were the standard for divestment, Yale would need to divest from all of its holdings.” 

While Israel described one ETF in which Yale invests — citing coverage from the News earlier this week that referred only to iShares — the 1 percent of endowment information that Yale publicly discloses includes holdings in at least one other such fund. These two ETFs are tied to dozens of weapons manufacturing companies involved with Israeli military defense.

Adam Nussbaum ’25, one of the protesters on Beinecke Plaza, pointed out this discrepancy.  

“The S&P 500 is only the tip of the iceberg,” Nussbaum wrote to the News. “This is about Yale’s direct ties to weapons manufacturing via shell companies managed by Wall Street asset managers, which they refuse to disclose to the Yale community. Yale should not be complicit in the destruction of educational institutions in Gaza or anywhere in the world.” 

Students also remain divided on the implications of Yale’s investments. Both Rosenberg and Israel said that Yale’s continued investment in weapons manufacturing would provide the state of Israel and other “countries of the free world” with the ability to defend themselves. In response, a Beinecke protester — who requested anonymity for safety concerns — said that the price of self-defense was incomparable to the cost of Palestinian lives in Gaza. 

The student disagreed with the necessity of U.S. involvement in the military defense of other countries, such as Israel and Ukraine. 

“As Americans, we have funneled billions of dollars into creating and protecting the Zionist settler colonial project,” the protester wrote to the News. “To this I say, yes, divest! Divest from the defense of Israel, Ukraine, America, and more. Forty billion dollars and God are worth the same to me, which is to say I think they are both worth absolutely nothing compared to a single Palestinian life.” 

While Rosenberg opposes divestment, he said that he does not “endorse” or “pursue” the suffering of the Palestinian people. 

Though Rosenberg hopes for an eventual ceasefire, he said that it would have to come with certain conditions, including Hamas returning all Israeli hostages and the surrender of its power in Gaza. 

During its Oct. 7 attack on the state of Israel, Hamas killed 1,200 people and took more than 250 people as hostages. In response, the Israeli military began an offensive in Gaza and has so far killed more than 33,700 Palestinians, the Associated Press reported on April 15 based on estimates from the Gaza Health Ministry. The Israeli government reports that Hamas still holds more than 130 hostages, of whom 36 are confirmed dead.

“As we say in the letter, war is awful and terrible, and not something that really I ever want anyone to have to endure … that is something that I hope does not get lost,” said Rosenberg. “I think that it is important to recognize that Israel, as does any country, has the right to defend itself and, on Oct. 7, was put into a position in which it needed to defend itself against a terror organization that has destroyed and caused the loss of life for many, many, many Israelis and Palestinians.” 

The Yale Corporation is the University’s 17-member board of trustees.

Correction, April 18: This article has been updated to amend repeated misspellings of Rosenberg’s last name.

Update, April 18: This article has been updated to include additional comment from pro-divestment organizers.

The post Students react to Yale divestment decision appeared first on Yale Daily News.

In the first 24 hours of its circulation, the letter gained 133 signatures — including students, parents, alumni and professors across Yale College and Yale’s graduate schools. The letter followed the monthslong advocacy campaign to pressure the University to divest from military weapons manufacturing and claims that only a minority of Yale students support the divestment. The News could not independently verify views across the student body. 

“We call on you not to divest from companies that provide Israel, along with Ukraine and other countries of the free world, with the integral ability to defend itself against countries that seek to dismantle democracy and plunge the world into panic and destruction,” the authors of the letter wrote.

The letter refers to Iran launching drones and missiles against Israel earlier this week, an escalatory retaliation to Israel killing seven people — including two senior members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — in a strike this month against Iran’s consular building in Syria. The letter also refers to Hezbollah’s rocket and drone attacks on Israel to justify military weapons investments as a way to support what it describes as Israeli self-defense. 

The document mentions as well Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, during which Hamas killed around 1,200 people and kidnapped around 250 more. Since then, Israel has killed more than 33,700 Palestinians over the course of its war against Hamas in Gaza, the Associated Press reported on April 15 based on estimates from the Gaza Health Ministry, and the Israeli government reports that Hamas still holds more than 130 hostages, of whom 36 are confirmed dead.

The letter further cites remarks from a post that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky made on X, formerly Twitter, comparing Iran’s recent attacks on Israel to routine Russian attacks on Ukraine. Russia has used Iranian Shahed drones to attack Ukrainian energy infrastructure and residential areas.

“Words do not stop drones and do not intercept missiles. Only tangible assistance does,” Zelensky wrote in a post — which the letter cites — condemning Iran’s attack on the state of Israel.  

The Patriot air defense system, which the U.S. provided to Ukraine to shut down Russian rockets and drones, is manufactured by Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Boeing — companies from which protesters have called on the University to divest. 

Israel noted that no Ukranian student directly contributed to writing the letter but said he spoke with a Ukrainian peer about it.

“When I let [a Ukrainian classmate] know the contents of the letter and asked her if she thinks her Ukrainian friends would be willing to stand against the call for the divestment of the companies that also provide the defense equipment that allows Ukraine to defend itself,” Israel recounted, “she said that although she had not yet read the petition, if the emphasis is on defense, she thinks it is likely many Ukrainian students would sign.”

Israel added that he reached out to Ukraine House at Yale, a student organization that has advocated for aiding Ukraine amid Russia’s full-scale invasion, but had not yet received a response due to “the rapid progression of the petition and events.”

In Israel’s view, Yale’s investments have played an important role in aiding democratic countries in defending themselves. 

“As stated in our petition, without the military jets of Lockheed Martin, the Iron Dome (Raytheon Manufacturing) and Arrow (Boeing Manufacturing) interceptor missiles, and the patriot defense systems (Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing), democratic countries around the world would have no means to defend themselves against the powers that seek to destroy them,” Israel wrote.

To one Beinecke protester, who requested anonymity on the grounds of safety concerns, claims of Israel’s self-defense and American democracy do not fully encapsulate the scope of the destruction in Gaza.

“These words like nation, Western world, Israeli defense, American democracy: they have little meaning to me,” the protester wrote to the News. “You must remember that for most of us with non-European heritage, the imperial and colonial interests of the West are responsible for the very worst of our homeland’s wounds. We know very well who the true malicious actor is. We know very well what America seeks to destroy.”

In its final remarks, the letter urged Salovey to “refuse the demands from a small minority of students.” 

At around 150, the number of participants in the pro-divestment sit-in protests this week has been slightly greater than the number of signatories the letter accrued in just under one day. 

Since November, Yale students have submitted more than 2,200 letters to Salovey urging Yale to divest its investment in arms manufacturers. At the beginning of the Beinecke occupation, the Yale students for divestment created a second letter campaign which has since garnered 480 letters. Accordingly, another pro-divestment protester who also requested anonymity on the grounds of safety concerns said the letter’s mention of a “‘small minority’ is dishonest and disingenuous.” 

“We hope that this is the end of the campaign against the companies that allow Israel and the western world to defend itself, but we are aware that this is likely not the case,” wrote Israel to the News of the University’s decision on investment policies. “We will stand strong by our beliefs, growing our coalition every day, to continue showing the administration that hundreds of their students, faculty, alumni, and parent body support them and their decision.”   

Yale adopted a policy prohibiting investments in assault weapons retailers in 2018 and committed in its Wednesday announcement to divestment from assault weapons manufacturers that retail to the general public. 

Stasiuk, one of this article’s co-authors, is also the vice president of Ukraine House at Yale but was not involved in any sourcing or reporting directly related to that affiliation.

Update, April 18: This article has been updated to also include information about pro-divestment letters submitted to the University and comment from a pro-divestment protester.

The post Yalies send letter to Salovey opposing divestment appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Yale wrote in a statement that its Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility updated its policy to cover all assault weapons manufacturers that “engage in retail activities to the general public” but refused to divest from military weapons manufacturers. 

“The ACIR concluded that military weapons manufacturing for authorized sales did not meet the threshold of grave social injury, a prerequisite for divestment,” the University wrote in the statement.

The announcement comes amid monthslong calls from students for divestment from military weapons manufacturers, including a current student demonstration occupying Beinecke Plaza and a hunger strike that has urged the University to completely divest from weapons manufacturers. 

Hunger Strikers for Palestine has urged the University to divest from weapons manufacturers, stating their willingness to risk their “bodily health and wellbeing” in an effort to get the University to meet their demands. 

Yale Students Demand Action, a group working on gun violence prevention, brought a proposal to the ACIR to divest from all gun manufacturers last spring, prompting the review of the policy. 

Last November, University President Peter Salovey told the News that Yale would revisit its investments in weapons manufacturing amid student protests, renewed after Israel formally declared war against Hamas in Gaza.

In the Wednesday announcement, the University said that the ACIR had heard student presentations concerning the military weapons manufacturing divestment at its annual open meeting in November 2023. 

While the ACIR expanded the scope of the divestment policy, the key demand of protestors and hunger strikers — divestment from military weapons manufacturing — was not met. 

In the statement, the University stated that the military weapons manufacturing “supports socially necessary uses, such as law enforcement and national security.” 

The new policy on assault weapons manufacturers is an expansion of a 2018 policy that prohibited the Yale Corporation from investing in assault weapons retailers. Now the University will also divest from assault weapons manufacturers that “effectively retail” to the public. 

Protesters, who had been on Beinecke Plaza since Monday, moved to the rotunda in Schwarzman Center to avoid rain. The group of student hunger strikers declined to comment, saying that they would release a statement this evening. 

Josie Reich and Adam Walker contributed reporting.

This is a developing story that the News will continue to cover.

Update, April 17: This article has been update to attribute the protesters’ departure from the outdoor plaza to the rain. 

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Brennan will start his work as a contracted consultant in late April after stepping down from his position in Hartford. According to New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker, Brennan will work on strengthening LCI’s operations, services and engagement with tenants and landlords.

LCI has come under fire in recent years for failing to adequately address tenant complaints, primarily due to an understaffed team.

Earlier this year, Elicker submitted a budget proposal to expand LCI’s staff and funding. If approved, the proposal will add eight new staff positions and create a new Office of Housing and Community Development that focuses on creating new housing throughout the city.

“LCI has taken a lot of really good steps in recent years to improve the work that they are doing,” Elicker told the News. “We’re looking at ways to improve their work further. Part of that is the budget proposal as submitted to the alders … and part of this is bringing on some outside thought partners to assist as well.”

Brennan told the News that Elicker called him at the end of last year to discuss housing issues in the city and invited him to apply for the contract. Brennan said he felt that the mayor was committed to investing in LCI, and when the city opened bids for the consultant contract, he applied. 

According to Elicker, Brennan was the only applicant for the contract but the mayor underscored that he “brings a lot to the table.” 

After spending 10 years working in the Department of Justice, Brennan joined the New Haven Legal Assistance Association, where he worked in the newly created Community and Economic Development unit for one year. During this time, Brennan spoke to many residents who raised complaints about the quality and affordability of the city’s housing stock.

“Those sentiments map onto the data that’s out there about how many people are rent-burdened in New Haven … There was this confluence of … the high-level data and anecdotal experience of people I was interacting with,” Brennan said. 

Roughly half of households in New Haven are cost-burdened, meaning that over 30 percent of their gross income goes towards housing costs. This is among the highest rates of cost-burdened households of any municipality in the state.

These perspectives led Brennan to center his mayoral campaign on the housing crisis in the city. 

Before moving to his job in Hartford mayor’s office as an inspector general, Brennan also served as an executive director of the Connecticut Veterans Legal Center, where a third of legal cases concerned housing, he said.

In the Democratic mayoral primary last September, Brennan lost to Elicker by more than a 2-to-1 margin. 

“We’ve always had a good relationship despite the fact that we had a competition last year,” Brennan said of Elicker. 

Under the contract, Brennan will be paid at the rate of $100 an hour, with a maximum monthly compensation of $15,000, according to Lenny Speiller, the city director of communications. Over the course of six months, the maximum compensation will be $75,000. 

Brennan commended Elicker’s proposal to add staff members to LCI, including new inspectors and an attorney. He emphasized that the department should explore legal mechanisms to enforce housing codes.  

Staff changes to LCI may also impact different entities within the city.

Laura Brown, the executive director of the City Plan Department, noted that the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals works alongside on housing and enforcement issues.

“Our staff work closely together,” Brown said.

During the project, Brennan will work with city housing employees and research experiences in other municipalities to recommend structural changes to LCI. He said that his advocacy experiences will inform his work for the city, but he will “keep an open mind.”

Brennan said he expects to finish the work by October. He shared that he does not have any plans after his contract with the city ends but will continue to stay engaged with New Haven. 

“New Haven is my home, and I love the city, and the chance to do this here and work with the people who are living in community is really, really exciting,” Brennan said.

The next fiscal year starts on July 1.

The post Former mayoral challenger Liam Brennan contracted by city to reimagine Livable City Initiative appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The city employs over 1,400 full-time workers in total — excluding those employed through federal and state grants and the Board of Education employees. In his proposal for the next fiscal year, Elicker proposed adding 31 additional full-time and two part-time positions. The budget has to be first approved by the Board of Alders. 

The News found that the average salary for Elicker’s 31 proposed full-time positions, excluding workers at the Livable Cities Initiative and part-time employees, is $91,802. This compares to next year’s average salary of $80,589 for all full-time workers. 

Out of 31 proposed positions, 21 will make more than the total average salary, including several deputy directors, which increases the average for the group. 

Cost of running the city

If the budget is approved by alders in its current form, the city will employ 1,440 full-time workers across its 30 departments. This number does not include teachers and employees whose salaries will be paid by state and federal grants — like the proposed additional staffers on the Livable City Initiative.

Overall, the city will spend over $116 million on salaries out of $680 million of general funds. 

Over 88 percent of the city employees work in one of the 10 largest departments. The two largest departments — fire and police — employ 805 workers, almost half of the city staff. 

The next three biggest departments are the public works and parks departments, which currently are merged but, under Elicker’s proposed budget, will be split apart, and the public health department. 

Across its departments, the city also employs part-time workers to staff the polling locations on election days, do seasonal work in parks, enter data for various departments and enforce traffic rules. 

In the proposed budget, the city plans to spend another $3,783,782 on salaries for part-time employees. 

City’s highest earners

Next fiscal year, city salaries will range from $46,350 for voter clerks to $178,190 for fire and police chiefs, per Elicker’s budget proposal. 

The mayor proposed adding an additional deputy economic developing administrator, who will earn $136,409, to oversee housing programs. 

The proposed executive director of the parks department, which Elicker proposed to separate from the current parks and public works, will earn $130,000. The deputy policy, management, grants budget director will earn $132,000. 

In total, 36 employees will earn more than Elicker. These mainly include directors of departments.

Three members of the mayor’s office earn more than he earns. Other departments with a high number of high earners include engineering, in which four engineers earn more than the mayor, economic development and corporate counsel. 

Last year, Elicker proposed adding 34 new positions, though the Board of Alders rejected 25. Alders are expected to approve the budget in May and can reject positions or amend salaries. 

The next fiscal year starts on July 1.

The post DATA: Who makes more than the mayor? appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Last month, Mayor Justin Elicker submitted an ordinance to the Board of Alders to install 19 cameras across the city. Elicker’s budget proposal, which was submitted on March 1, also allocates funding for the project. 

If alders approve it, the city will install 11 red light cameras and eight speed cameras. The system will identify the license plates of cars that ignore red lights or go more than 10 miles per hour above the speed limit. Owners of such cars will receive a $50 ticket for the first offense and $75 tickets for all subsequent ones.

Courtesy of the City of New Haven

“I remember probably 12 or 13 years ago driving to the Capitol to testify myself on the state allowing municipalities to install red light cameras,” Elicker said at the press conference on March 18. “This is a huge milestone.”

Just in 2023, 16 people died in car crashes in New Haven, according to the Connecticut Crash Data Repository. Officially announcing the program, Elicker stood at the corner of South Frontage Road and Park Street, where he said 13 red-light-related crashes happened last year. He expressed hope that cameras will be able to change people’s behavior on New Haven roads and reduce the number of crashes in the city. 

Elicker said that the city worked for over a decade to lobby the state to allow the installation of these cameras. Last year, the Connecticut General Assembly passed the bill that allows implementation of automated cameras to combat traffic accidents, but no city in the state has yet installed them. 

“We’ve doubled our traffic unit, but we can’t be everywhere,” New Haven Police Chief Karl Jacobson said at the press conference. “This is going to allow us to put these cameras in place, have people ticketed while we’ll also be in other intersections, still doing speed enforcement [and] traffic enforcement.”

The Board of Alders will hold public hearings on the program and can amend the proposed locations for the cameras or other parts of the program. If alders approve the installation of cameras, the project will also have to be approved by the state. 

Elicker told the News that he expects cameras to be installed by the end of the next fiscal year, if approved by the alders and the state. 

Maximilian Chaoulideer — member of the New Haven Safe Streets Coalition, the group that lobbied the state to allow the use of automated traffic enforcement — wrote that the root cause of traffic violence is the design of the roads and cities, but redesigning them takes time. In the meantime, he believes, automated enforcement presents “the most effective strategy” to deter dangerous driving.

“Since 2019 in New Haven, 50 people have been killed in vehicle crashes, 40 pedestrians have been killed, and four people riding bikes. One measure of success is a reduction of these tragic numbers,” Abigail Roth, another member of the New Haven Safe Streets Coalition, wrote to the News. “Another is people not getting more than one ticket from a camera, showing they changed dangerous driving behavior, which is the goal of the cameras.”

Human rights groups express concerns

The use of red light and speed cameras has been opposed, both nationally and in Connecticut, by human rights groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The groups expressed concerns about the violation of privacy.

At the press conference, Elicker responded that in 2024 cameras are everywhere, and that is the reality of the time we are living in. The mayor told the News that the installed cameras will only be used for ticketing purposes and will not have a face recognition system.

Cameras also ticket the owner of the car, regardless of who was driving it, which the groups say might violate the due process. 

Responding to the concern, Elicker said that the already-installed cameras that fine for not paying parking fees work the same way — they ticket the owner of the car, not the person who parked it. 

The ACLU and NAACP also cite racial justice threats, as the cameras can be installed predominantly in minority or low-income communities. 

“NAACP is adamantly against this,” Scot X. Esdaile, president of the NAACP Connecticut State Conference, told the News. “This is just another way of putting … fines on Black and Brown people.” 

Roth credited State Representative Roland Lemar, who championed the bill to allow automated traffic enforcement, for creating safeguards against such abuses. 

Elicker said that the state legislation limits the number of cameras that cities can install in any particular neighborhood. Moreover, the red light cameras can only be installed at the intersections where at least two red-light-related crashes happened in the last three years. Speeding cameras are installed only in school zones. 

At the press conference, City Transit Director Sandeep Aysola also stressed that automated traffic enforcement systems will help the city avoid “the risk of any bias or escalation that exists when there’s a human being giving the tickets.”

Esdaile believes that the issue is not the placing of cameras in New Haven, but the fact that these cameras are usually installed in cities, which in the United States have higher shares of minority populations. 

“You don’t see any red light cameras going up in Greenwich, Connecticut, or any other affluent area in the State of Connecticut,” he said. 

Budgeting the project

The city budgeted around $750,000 for the implementation of the program in the mayor’s 2024-25 fiscal year proposal. The mayor proposed adding four new positions to manage the program, with combined salaries totaling around $250,000. 

New staff will be implementing the program and reviewing the appropriateness of tickets before the city sends them out, Elicker said.

The rest of the program’s budget, or around $475,000, will be spent on contractual services to install the cameras and other miscellaneous expenses.

The city expects to see an increase in revenue from tickets. In the proposed budget, the city included an estimated additional $700,000 in revenues generated by the program, but Elicker told the News that it is “hard to know exactly” what this number will actually be. 

The ACLU and NAACP suggest that automated traffic enforcement creates incentives for the city or contractors to maximize the revenue, instead of pursuing traffic safety. 

“This is another way to throw another tax on the people,” Esdaile said. “They’re trying to make money … off the poor people in urban communities, and it’s unfair.” 

Elicker claims that the city is not interested in using the tool to collect revenue and the goal of the program is to force drivers to obey the law. 

Per the mayor’s budget proposal, New Haven will lose around $50,000 in the next fiscal year on automated cameras. However, the program cost for the coming year includes contracting needed to install the cameras, and will likely go down in subsequent years. 

“Typically, in the initial period after the cameras are installed, you will see a lot of tickets given out and then after a period of time the number of tickets given out will dramatically reduce because people will begin to obey the law,” Elicker told the News. 

The 2024-25 fiscal year starts on July 1. 

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