The USCIS said it plans to deny noncitizen students “immigration benefit requests” if it finds that students are “linked to antisemitic activity.” Such activity would include supporting violent antisemitic ideologies and terrorist organizations on social media.

“[DHS Secretary Kristi Noem] has made it clear that anyone who thinks they can come to America and hide behind the First Amendment to advocate for anti-Semitic violence and terrorism – think again. You are not welcome here,” DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said, according to the announcement. 

The federal government uses the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, which includes “targeting of the state of Israel,” with the caveat that it is not antisemitic to lodge criticisms of Israel “similar to that leveled against any other country.” Yale’s policies on discrimination and harassment were recently updated to include that the IHRA definition would be “considered among other resources.”

The OISS’s immigration FAQ page notes that immigration attorneys partnered with the University can provide short-term legal assistance to international students regarding visa, travel and other immigration issues.

To the News’ questions about whether this legal assistance will be provided for students scrutinized under the new policy, Ozan Say, the director the OISS, told the News that the University will provide legal assistance to international students regardless of the specific context.

“OISS’s legal assistance is not tied to any specific action or policy but is available regarding visa, travel, and other immigration issues,” Say wrote.

On Thursday, the OISS’s immigration updates website added an update summarizing the new policy. Say told the News that his office will provide additional guidance as it learns “more about the impact of this announcement.”

A spokesperson for the pro-Palestinian Sumud Coalition wrote to the News that Yale should do more to protect student protesters, including ending “the YPD’s surveillance of student activists” and deleting disciplinary records of students “who’ve been punished for protest.”

The Yale Police Department has used social media surveillance to monitor students involved in Yalies4Palestine, Yale’s pro-Palestine activist group, during its encampment last spring. YPD analysts actively tracked social media accounts belonging to pro-Palestinian student groups, creating a spreadsheet listing student followers of the Yalies4Palestine and OccupyYale Instagram accounts. 

“If Yale were serious about fighting antisemitism and defending students, it would stand up to Trump – who dines with Holocaust deniers – instead of staying silent,” the Sumud Coalition spokesperson said.

The new DHS policy follows a string of federal measures against alleged antisemitism on university campuses.

On Jan. 29, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that gave agencies 60 days to find ways to deport “Hamas sympathizers” on college campuses.

On March 10, the Department of Education sent letters to 60 universities, including Yale, warning them of potential enforcement actions if they did not take action to address antisemitism on campus. The Education Department opened a second investigation into antisemitism at Yale on March 26.

The OISS is located at 421 Temple St.

The post DHS to screen international students’ social media for “antisemitic activity” appeared first on Yale Daily News.

In an Instagram post, organizers cited the rapper’s “health complications” as the reason for the cancelled performance and said that they are searching for a new headliner. 

“We know that this is disappointing news for many, and we share in that disappointment,” the committee shared on Instagram. “That said, our team is already hard at work securing a new headliner for Spring Fling 2025.”

NLE Choppa’s cancellation follows a string of dropped performances in recent days, including at Vanderbilt University, where the school’s Programming Board told attendees on April 2 that Choppa would not perform due to “extreme dehydration and exhaustion.”

Yale’s Spring Fling committee did not immediately respond to request for comment. However, in an Instagram post, the committee encouraged Yale students to be on the lookout for further updates and announcements in the coming days. 

Students the News spoke to expressed disappointment at the cancellation and hope that the Spring Fling committee will be able to find an exciting replacement. 

Fidah Kabwita ’26 said that it was “shocking” given the event’s close date. She also shared her optimism that the committee will be able to find an equally popular talent on such short notice.

“I hope Spring Fling can come through,” Kabwita said. “It’s in two weeks and it’s giving very 11:59 due date, but I trust that the committee can pull something together.”

Favour Akingbemi ’26 invited her friends from home to come to the event, and said that she was dismayed at the news. She also expressed hope that the Spring Fling committee will be able to “find someone who is at the same level or maybe better,” even if she is unsure how possible it is.  

In a joint statement to the News, members of the Yale student Band “Clementine,” which performed at Spring Fling’s Battle of the Bands in 2024 and their Tiny Desk series, wrote that NLE Choppa cancelling was “honestly a tragedy.”

Soleil Piverger ’27 said that while she was upset that NLE Choppa would no longer perform at Yale, she was glad the artist was thinking about his health. 

“We were thrilled to have him, but we will be even more thrilled to know he’s in good health,” Piverger said. 

Meka Rucker ’28 said she’s “sad to hear” that NLE Choppa is not feeling well, but noted that he was never one of her favorite artists. A last-minute replacement could be “even more hype,” she added. 

Spring Fling’s most recent cancellation occurred in 2019 when the committee announced three days before the concert that Playboi Carti would replace Lil Uzi Vert as the headlining act.

Last-minute cancellations aren’t uncommon, with Chance the Rapper canceling his 2014 Spring Fling performance just four days before the show.

Last year, Swae Lee headlined Yale Spring Fling.

The post NLE Choppa no longer performing at Spring Fling appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Chen and Wills spoke with the News about their visions for how they would lead the events branch — offering distinct approaches to student engagement, event planning and community building.

Chen’s priority is “to create a sense of belonging”

“The most important aspect of my campaign I want to emphasize is uplifting student voices, especially those passionate about building community in their own unique ways,” Chen said. “I want to take the knowledge and experience I already have in event planning and logistics to turn big dreams into big, inclusive, and memorable events.”

For Chen, this would entail creating more accessible channels for students to be involved with the event planning, “from student organization leaders to those that simply just want to pitch their input.”

She also would envision expanding the pre-professional panels the YCC currently organizes to reflect a wider range of interests. She hopes student feedback and ideas could guide these panels and other events.

“Yale has given me many opportunities to do things and be in roles that I never thought would be possible for me, and I am fully committed to give back to the community,” Chen said.

Chen also emphasized how her background has influenced her passion for creating connections and building community.

She helped out with her family’s business growing up, and the connections and relationships she made with customers remind her of the Yale community.

“I didn’t see the customers as just people who order food. Every single person feels like family; I know their faces, I know what they order. I probably know where they live,” she said. “That’s what Yale feels like, too. It’s a family, a community. We’re all from different places, but we’re united.”

Working in her family restaurant also reinforced Chen’s sense of the “importance of working together as a team” — a priority she would bring to YCC Events planning.

Chen also wanted to highlight her genuine commitment to helping “every single student feel that they belong” and her gratitude and love for the Yale community.

“Yale is so special because of the people,” she said. “Sometimes it feels like we live in a world where there’s a lot of conflict, but at the end of the day, we’re here for each other.”

Wills hopes to “bridge the gap” between Yale and New Haven

“I think we always just complain about how Yale is a bubble,” Wills said. “Why not, as Events Director, create events that engage students, but by connecting them to the valuable, different opportunities we have here in New Haven?”

Wills, who currently serves as Junior Class President, pointed to his experience organizing the first Intercultural Food Market as a model for what future events could look like. An event featured food from local restaurants, drew over 300 students and brought over $4,000 into New Haven restaurants, according to Wills.

Wills said that while he would preserve traditional events like Halloween Night of Terror and the Harvard-Yale tailgate, he would also utilize the Events Director’s capacity to create new events for the class.

Wills proposed various new initiatives, such as restaurant crawls during cultural heritage months in partnership with the cultural centers and community dinners with New Haven locals.

“There’s so much great food here, but I’ve never really tried it because I can’t afford it,” he said. “As Events Director, we can bridge that gap between New Haven and Yale through events by bringing the food to students, making Yale people happy, and also connecting with New Haven.”

Wills also pointed to his hands-on event planning experience — from trivia nights and Valentine’s Day programs to organizing the junior formal.

He also spoke about his off-campus engagement. Last summer, he interned at Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services, or IRIS, and this summer he’ll be a director at the Harvest Bureau.

“I’m really passionate about New Haven and connecting students with the beautiful stuff going on here,” he said. “I’ve seen it firsthand, through living here over the summer, how much there is going on here, and I just want to help students connect with as well.”

Ultimately, both candidates emphasized that events are about more than just logistics — they’re about people and community.

Voting begins on April 10 at 9 a.m. on YaleConnect and closes on April 11 at 9 p.m.

The post YCC CANDIDATE PROFILE: Kingson Wills ’26 and Maggie Chen ’26 face off in events director race appeared first on Yale Daily News.

For one thing, Moore is a rising senior, running for a position which has traditionally been occupied by a junior. He’s also running a solo ticket in a race against two joint tickets.

But, perhaps most significantly, Moore has no experience in the YCC. He has never had a position as a YCC representative or as a director in its executive branch. In an election where candidates often point to their own YCC record of bills or initiatives they co-sponsored, Moore instead points to his work in New Haven outreach organizations.

“My experience doesn’t lie in the bureaucracy,” Moore said. “It lies in the community.”

Moore is active in two Dwight Hall groups: Bridges ESL, a volunteer organization that provides free small-group English tutoring to immigrants and internationals in the New Haven community, and Link New Haven, a Dwight Hall member group founded by Moore that operates free and accessible community resource desks across New Haven and provides comprehensive resource guides.

For Moore, working in these groups has taught him the power of “tenacity” and “relentlessness” — qualities that he would bring to the Yale administration as YCC President.

“Through the nonprofits that I run, I’ve faced several barriers, but when I commit to a role, I commit to it 150 percent,” he said.

He described his Friday and Saturday nights spent in the Tower of the Humanities Quadrangle working on resources for his outreach organizations.

He added that he generally tries to “nix all the distractions” in his life: he does not drink or go out and his “first Instagram post was for this campaign.” 

“There’s no work and life separation for me. It’s just kind of the same thing,” he said. “It’s not a matter of ‘I’m gonna put in X amount of hours of work into this a week.’ It’s more like, ‘I’m gonna get the job done no matter how long it takes.’”

Moore acknowledged that his lack of YCC experience “certainly makes [him] a gamble of a candidate.” The YCC has specific rules, guidelines and general best practices for their advocacy work to ensure a smooth relationship with the administration that Moore would be entirely unfamiliar with as President.

He added, however, that this outsider perspective has allowed him to see exactly where the YCC needs to improve. One major concern for him is transparency. 

“We can wake up one day and we receive this email [about a policy change] that completely blindsides us out of left field, and we’re kind of left wondering where was the student advocacy there?” Moore said. “I’m not in YCC, so I don’t really know exactly what’s going on behind the scenes, but that makes me think that it needs more transparency.”

In certain instances, such as the announcement of changing lunch options at certain residential colleges, YCC members have informed the News of the administration’s upcoming announcement ahead of time; however, the specific details of meetings between student leaders and administrators are not always available to the public.

Another major policy Moore is advocating for is increased outreach and support for the New Haven community. He hopes to work to increase Yale’s voluntary payment to New Haven, which is currently $23.2 million every year.

In his work with Link New Haven, Moore said he’s spoken with people in the New Haven community who are homeless. He hopes that by “shin[ing] a light on their suffering” as YCC President, he can advocate that the University “do more for the City.”

“Right outside the university gates, there are folks sleeping in the street in below freezing conditions. I speak with these people every week, and honestly, it breaks my heart,” Moore said. “I’m trying to do my best with the resources that I have to combat the issue, but with greater influence, I feel like my voice would be a lot stronger.”

Ultimately, Moore concluded that he hopes that his goals — increasing transparency and accountability with the administration and helping build a better New Haven — would “resonate with voters.”

“I asked the student body to give me a shot and see what I can do,” he said.

Voting begins on April 10 at 9 a.m. on YaleConnect and closes on April 11 at 9 p.m.

The post YCC CANDIDATE PROFILE: Brian Moore ’26 appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The IHRA definition states that antisemitism includes “targeting of the state of Israel,” with the caveat that it is not antisemitic to lodge criticisms of Israel “similar to that leveled against any other country.” Scholars have debated the definition, with critics arguing it can conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism. Its proponents suggest that it emphasizes that discourse about Israel can go beyond legitimate political criticism and become antisemitic. 

An archive of Yale’s policies from the day before Trump was inaugurated in January does not include the IHRA definition. The policy page states that it was last revised on March 28. The University did not announce publicly that it would begin to consider IHRA’s definition. 

Yale has not adopted one definition of antisemitism but instead disciplines antisemitism as part of its broader rules surrounding discrimination and harassment on the basis of race, ethnicity and shared heritage. The IHRA definition was added as a footnote that Yale “considers” as part of these broad guidelines. 

The definition includes several clauses tying antisemitism to Israel, such as describing as antisemitic “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” and “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”

Linda Maizels, recently-appointed inaugural managing director for the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism, said that one of the reasons that universities are looking at suddenly adopting the IHRA definition is pressure from the Trump administration, adding that not all American Jews support such efforts. 

“Many Jews are uncomfortable because they feel that some of these measures are coming out ‘in their name,’ and they don’t support broad-based attacks on removing money from universities,” she said. “I don’t think this is effective. In the end, it could result in exacerbating hostilities against Jews.” 

Maizels, who is a prominent scholar of contemporary antisemitism on college campuses, said that the IHRA definition was not meant to be used in campus settings, but added that it’s a “useful guide.”  

“I don’t think that an institution adopting the IHRA definition is necessarily going to solve the antisemitism problem,” Maizels said. “On the other hand, I don’t think it is as dangerous as it’s made out to be.”

Yale’s addition of the definition comes amid pressure at peer institutions to reevaluate their definitions of antisemitism. 

Columbia University recently revised its definition of antisemitism amid pressure from the Trump administration to adopt the IHRA definition in exchange for restoring federal funding. While the administration urged adoption of the IHRA definition, Columbia instead implemented its own similar version.

Harvard University adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism in January as part of settlements of two lawsuits surrounding antisemitism on Harvard campus. The decision to adopt this definition has been criticized. 

Deena Margolies, an attorney who led the settlement with Harvard, also filed a discrimination complaint that led the Department of Education to open an investigation into antisemitism at Yale. Margolies said that one result she would like to see of the investigation into Yale is the University’s adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism.

“I know people get very upset when they hear IHRA, and they think, ‘Oh gosh, they’re going to tell us we can’t criticize Israel,’” Margolies said. “And that’s not what IHRA is about. I think the hope is that there will be more speech and more dialogue.”

Administrators emphasized that the IHRA definition is not the only consideration in their disciplinary rules on antisemitism. 

The University spokesperson wrote to the News that Yale’s Office of Institutional Equity and Accessibility “considers all applicable state and federal legal and regulatory guidance” in addition to the IHRA definition. 

The spokesperson added that “Yale’s policies and procedures related to Discrimination, Harassment, and Retaliation are not intended to infringe free speech or the free expression of ideas.”

“We’re very committed to preventing antisemitism and to helping anybody who becomes a victim of antisemitism,” explained Dean of Yale College Pericles Lewis. “But we don’t have a separate definition of it.” 

The definition has been used by the U.S. State Department since 2010.

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As the Trump administration continues its targeted deportations of students for their political activities, student protesters face renewed concerns of doxxing, or the publishing of their private information online. The YCC called on Yale to establish a clear policy prohibiting doxxing, commit to providing legal aid to victims of doxing and affirm the right of student protesters to wear face masks. The bill passed in the YCC via a proxy quorum vote. 

“With students across the country facing unprecedented threats to their right to exercise free speech on college campuses, it’s more critical now than ever before that Yale commits unwaveringly to protecting its students,” said Sovy Pham ’27, a senator from Saybrook College and the principal author of the YCC anti-doxxing bill.

Several websites and social media platforms that publish information about pro-Palestinian students and professors have gained national attention amid Trump’s deportations of pro-Palestine student protesters. Some even call on the Trump administration to deport individuals whom they have found to be noncitizens.

Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk, two pro-Palestine international students at Columbia and Tufts, respectfully, who were both detained by the Trump administration, were featured on the Canary Mission, a website which asserts its mission is to “document[] people and groups that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews” and has information on hundreds of students and professors from universities across the country. 

While some of the deported students were featured on the Canary Mission, or Betar, an organization that publishes similar information, the Trump administration has denied that they use such websites to guide arrests.

Currently, Yale’s website on “Resources for doxing and other online abuse and harassment” advises that students contact Yale Police Officers, whose email and phone numbers are listed on the site. 

Sergeant Kristina Reech, former sensitive crimes and support coordinator for the Yale Police Department, whose phone number is listed on this website, explained that the officer would listen to the student’s report of doxxing and help them determine next steps.

Depending on the circumstances, the officer could help the student file a report to investigate the source of the doxxing, receive basic safety tips, work with Yale to remove their information from the University directory or connect with the Title IX office if the case also involved sexual harassment, per Reech.

“The first and most important thing is listening,” Reech said. “When the university put out [the informational website], they wanted to give an additional resource of somebody who would listen and who is trained in trauma policing and therefore understands that these are serious calls for students.”

The YCC proposal argues that current policies on doxxing are “largely external to the university’s bureaucratic infrastructure and ask that students/Yale community members take individual action to protect themselves from further harassment.” It suggests that a Yale office, such as the Office of Institutional Equity and Accessibility, be mainly responsible for handling student doxxing and offering guidance.

The proposal also argues that Yale establish a clear policy on doxxing, which it currently does not have, modeling it on universities like Stanford University, Columbia and Harvard, all of which prohibit doxxing in their disciplinary codes.

“There is a policy on recording people and photographing them without their permission, which is often a prerequisite for doxxing, or at least it’s an element of doxxing,” explained Dean of Yale College Pericles Lewis. “Doxxing is also hard to define and some things that might be described as doxxing might not be against the harassment rules because they’re things that we can’t control.”

The YCC proposal also asked Yale to commit to providing “full legal counsel and resources for students who are victims of doxxing” and “policy of non-disclosure of student records, including disciplinary records, to third parties.”

University President Maurie McInnis emphasized that Yale is focusing on understanding and following the law amid the Trump administration’s attempts to deport international students and scholars, in some cases citing evidence of the student’s disciplinary record. Yale administrators had previously asserted that they will offer short-term legal assistance to international students at risk of deportation and not provide information to government agents without a judicial subpoena.

The YCC proposal also asks that Yale make a public commitment to free speech protections and “affirm the right of students to wear masks during protests and political demonstrations” to protect their identities from doxxing. Preventing protesters from concealing their identities has been a focal point of Trump’s attacks on universities. Columbia recently adopted a policy against masking to meet the demands of the Trump administration and restore their federal funding. 

Yale College does not currently have a policy against masking during protests. In a recent interview with the News, Lewis affirmed that he doesn’t “anticipate any changes” to this masking policy, but clarified that there is “a requirement that people show their ID when asked by a College or University employee who’s authorized.”

A spokesperson for the Sumud Coalition, Yale’s pro-Palestine activism group, endorsed the YCC’s resolution and called on Yale to do more to protect student protesters.

“Students should never have to fear for their safety for engaging in protest and free speech,” the spokesperson said.

The Yale College Council was founded in 1972.

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This year, Yale College will reduce the financial support for summer storage from 75 percent, with a cap at $340 per student, to 50 percent, with a cap at $225. In the summer of 2023, Yale College offered full storage reimbursement, giving low-income students a flat $400 for their storage needs. Until summer 2023, Yale allowed all students to store their things in residential college basements free of charge. 

But this year, low-income students will have to pay more out of pocket. 

“Summer storage –  it is a necessity,” said Melangelo Pride ’26, who is a first-generation, low-income, or FGLI, student. “We have to have our stuff with us and we have to be able to store it over summer. It’s a big worry for people who can’t afford it.” 

Pride added that she’s trying to introduce policies to include summer storage in financial aid packages and external scholarships. The main problem, she says, is that summer storage “is just not seen as a necessity.” 

Kennedy Smith ’26, who is also an FGLI student, emphasized that finding a way to pay for storage “out of pocket” is a stress-inducing burden for low-income students and their families. 

“The cost of even a storage unit out of pocket is something that I don’t think I could prepare myself for … If your family is unable to support you with those costs, then you’re left alone with this big expense right at the end of the year that you don’t know how to account for,” Smith said.

When asked whether Yale’s summer storage support for low income students could ever go back to full reimbursement, Burgwell Howard, associate dean of Yale College, wrote that he “do[es] not anticipate that the university’s level of support will increase” since they have been in a “phased mode” the last three years. 

Smith speculated that the amount of support from the University would keep decreasing until the University stopped providing support. 

He said that Dean of Student Life Melanie Boyd sent an email to students in March 2023 which “made clear” that the financial assistance the University would provide low income students after there was no longer a residential college basement summer storage option would be “temporary” and would “reduce it by a certain amount each year until they no longer provided support.”

Smith is also the founder of SummerStore, a Yale-only moving and storage service that is a “vetted partner” of the university and eligible for the student discount. He said SummerStore will continue its commitment towards affordability by offering new tiered pricing options —10, 20, and 30-item plans — rather than last year’s flat $250 dollars. 

He also noted that SummerStore is competing in the Startup Yale competition to secure funding to expand access to more students.

Yale has 14 residential colleges.

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For this advocacy trip, Yale Students for Carbon Dividends, a student-led organization, lobbied in support of the PROVE IT Act and the Foreign Pollution Fee Act of 2023 — two pieces of legislation that center carbon border adjustment mechanisms and emissions data transparency. The group met with offices of senators and representatives across the political spectrum to push for these bills.

The PROVE IT Act would allow for data collection of CO₂ emissions of foreign countries in comparison to the U.S., and the Foreign Pollution Fee Act would install a carbon border adjustment mechanism to encourage other countries to decarbonize. 

“We’re a bipartisan club, and so we were trying to split the difference between more liberal ideals of clean energy and green policy with this more Republican view of protecting American manufacturing,” said club member Katie Meine ’27. “I think it definitely showed that you don’t have to separate the two—you can have something that makes economic sense that also helps the environment.”

The group met with offices of several key figures in climate policy, including the offices of Senators Bernie Sanders, Lindsey Graham, Chris Coons, Thom Tillis and Bill Cassidy, as well as several members from the house of representatives. The group used the meetings to discuss the bills’ economic impacts and potential bipartisan appeal with staffers. 

Anika Shethia ’27 explained that “you could definitely feel” the impact of the Trump administration in these meetings. 

“It’s definitely tense in D.C., especially given everything that’s happening with budget cuts,” said Shethia. “A lot of the key departments, including [the Environmental Protection Agency] and the Department of Energy, are dealing with hiring freezes and firings. So it’s a lot more difficult to strategize around imminent climate concerns — even though the legislation we were advocating for was sensible economically.”

Meine added that in a meeting at the office of Republican Senator Thom Tillis, staffers implied that their policies on climate would “go along with the Trump’s administration’s.”

Despite challenges in the current political climate, students said they felt hopeful about the future of the two bills. 

Meine explained that while the staff members for Republican lawmakers she met with seemed reluctant in their wholehearted support of the bills, Democrats were “very receptive” and “excited.”

“Many staffers we met with were optimistic about the [bills] as a stepping stone to progress climate policy,” said Yana Eber ’27. “As the Trump presidency leans toward climate denialism, the amount of legislation on climate has severely diminished, but [these bills] felt like something we could still move forward with.”

On the first day in office of his second term, President Donald Trump signed an executive order withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Agreement on climate change. 

In 2022, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions totaled 6,343 million metric tons (14.0 trillion pounds) of carbon dioxide equivalents.

The post Yale group advocates for climate friendly economic policy in D.C. appeared first on Yale Daily News.

In February, Yale Hospitality announced that select dining halls — Pierson, Davenport, Trumbull, Jonathan Edwards and Timothy Dwight — would adopt new lunch and breakfast menus. 

Hot sandwiches, fries, falafel wraps and an expanded salad bar are now the set menu in these residential colleges rather than the rotating hot lunch menu. For breakfast, these dining halls, along with Berkeley, now offer pastries, cereal and hard-boiled eggs, but have removed oatmeal, yogurt and cut fruit. New specialty coffee machines, which offer lattes, cappuccinos, espresso and hot chocolate, were also added.

The News asked 30 students about their reactions to these changes: 11 expressed positive feelings, 12 neutral and seven negative. But with the new menus only in place for a few days, several students speculated that the dining halls have not yet experienced the full effects of the changes.

“I think that [the new lunch concept] offers a consistent lunch alternative, but it doesn’t address dining hall crowding and staff being overworked,” said Vy Nguyen ’27, a student in Pierson College, one of the colleges to implement the menu change. “Students will still want to head to more ‘popular’ halls, like Silliman, once the novelty of the new concept wears out.”

Lizzie Seward ’27, a student in Davenport College, said that she actually “prefers sandwiches to a lot of the regular lunch options.” 

Anika Shethia ’27 said that as a lifelong vegetarian, she is “pretty happy” about the additions to the salad bar. 

“I’ve been vegetarian my whole life, so I end up having a lot of salads! I am pretty happy about the new additions to the salad bar, new dressings and all,” Shethia said. “Of course, the coffee machines are great too.”

Ting Key ’27 told the News that he values breakfast as the most important meal of his day and a quiet, productive start. While he was concerned by the removal of oatmeal and yogurt, he spoke positively about the new coffee machines and expanded lunch options. He explained that he could still “walk 400 feet” to a dining hall with different options, but appreciated the convenience of dining in his own residential college during busy mornings.

Kyan Ramsay ’27, who is part of the Yale College Council Dining Team, told the News that he felt the reductions in dining options were hard to accept, given the rising cost of the food plans. 

“Every student should be able to enjoy a full and nutritious breakfast, lunch, and dinner in their own college – that’s what Yale sold us as an essential part of our college experience,” Ramsay wrote.

According to Yale’s website about tuition breakdown, food costs for the 2025-26 school year increased by $500, from $8,600 to $9,100. This comes as total cost rose to $90,550, 3.9 percent higher than the current term bill. 

When the policy change first became public, it was unpopular with many students. 

After the YCC found out about the upcoming changes, Dining Policy Director Anna Krans ’27 authored an open letter calling for a boycott of hosting prefrosh for Bulldog Days, Yale’s admitted student visiting days, until the University agreed to reinstate the previous lunch policies in all residential dining halls. 

The letter argued that removing standard lunch from the five select dining halls “imposes a hierarchy upon the residential college system” and “is the latest in a series of cost-cutting changes” made by Hospitality amid increasing meal plan costs. Over 200 students, including several YCC senators, undersigned Krans’ arguments. 

Krans did not immediately respond to comment on whether the Bulldog Days boycott would go ahead.

YCC President Mimi Papathanasopolous ’26 and Vice President Esha Garg ’26 asserted that the YCC has found that students are upset with the express breakfast model. Per Garg, an ongoing YCC survey revealed that many students find the new express breakfast model, which forgoes fruit and oatmeal for pastries, “not nutritious or healthy.”

“Personally, as a student in Grace Hopper, the Breakfast Express is disappointing; it has led me to skip breakfast altogether,” Garg wrote. “I believe that if Yale Hospitality is going to increase the price of its meal plans every year but also charge the same price for a meal plan for all students (regardless of residential college), a nutritious breakfast must be available in each college.”

Controversy over menu changes is a long-standing Yale tradition. In 1953, a group of disgruntled Yale students complained to the student association about the change from apricot juice to lemonade in a vending machine.

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