“I believed him until the last moment,” Vazquez confessed in Spanish. “The expression he had, the way he spoke — I said to myself, ‘I have also suffered hardships, so why don’t I support him? I know that, in the end, he will repay me.’”

The employer was a New Haven-based contractor who hired Vazquez and two dozen other construction workers to renovate a building in September 2021. Vazquez noted that most of the contractor’s employees, herself included, were undocumented immigrants struggling to stay afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic. Though the contractor did not compensate them for working overtime and occasionally paid their salaries late, she described him as a kind employer who always offered his workers a smile and a free coffee. “There was no work [during the pandemic],” Vazquez said in Spanish. “So, the people put up with it.”

Work on the construction project concluded in April 2022, leaving Vasquez without a job. Neither she nor the other workers received a salary for their last month of work. It wasn’t until months later — facing radio silence from her former employer — that Vazquez realized she would never be fully compensated for her work.

She estimates that the contractor withheld about $5,000 of her wages, including the unpaid overtime and salary during the final month of the project.

Spurred on by other stories like Vazquez’s, Eamon Coburn LAW ’25 proposed in June 2023 a city ordinance that would punish wage theft. In Connecticut, wage theft cases fall under the jurisdiction of the state Department of Labor, rather than city police departments. If implemented, Coburn’s proposed ordinance would allow city enforcement of labor laws in wage theft cases.

Coburn said city alders were “pretty receptive” to his idea. Yet almost two years later, no progress has been made on the proposal.

At the forefront of the fight to address wage theft in New Haven is immigrants’ rights organization Unidad Latina en Acción, or ULA, which assists victims of labor exploitation.

“If I go to a Stop and Shop and I steal a salsa or a gallon of milk… they will call the police on me and I can be detained for larceny,” John Jairo Lugo, ULA’s community organizing director, said in Spanish. “But if my boss makes me work the whole week on a roof — with the risk that I fall, that I get sick, that I die at my workplace — and he steals $1,000 of my salary, I can’t go to the police to denounce him because the police of New Haven will tell me that this is a civil offense and I need to go to the Department of Labor.”

The proposed ordinance — drafted by Coburn and other members of Yale Law School’s HAVEN medical-legal partnership — suggests granting the city Department of Health the authority to suspend or even revoke the licenses of businesses that violate labor laws, something Lugo has advocated for since 2013.

The ordinance is the latest in a string of community-based efforts over the past two decades to combat wage theft on the local level. But stalled progress on the proposed reforms has left victims of wage theft to navigate a convoluted Department of Labor system alone.

Case backlog in Connecticut Department of Labor

For Coburn, the recent understaffing of the state Department of Labor, or DOL, makes the proposed New Haven ordinance even more imperative. With a slashed budget and a reduced number of investigators, Connecticut’s DOL faces a growing backlog of cases — and a 63 percent drop in wages recovered in 2024 compared to fiscal year 2014.

Last year’s audit found that as of May 2023, the Connecticut DOL had not begun to investigate 843 of 2,000 workplace complaints since 2021, including a case that took nearly a year to be assigned to a state wage inspector. The audit’s findings sparked outrage among Lugo and other ULA members, who rallied outside the DOL on Aug. 1, 2024.

Lugo condemned the DOL’s delayed response to workplace complaints, which he believes discourages people from reporting future instances of wage theft to the state. 

“A year [after submitting the complaint], it’s possible that I changed my job, I changed my phone number, I’m not living in the same house,” Lugo said in Spanish. “Or the DOL is asking me for documentation that I already lost because a ton of time has passed and I got tired of waiting for them to call me.”

Juliet Manalan, a spokesperson for the DOL, acknowledged the “well-documented” case backlog and limited staff in the DOL unit that oversees workplace complaints. Still, she encouraged victims of wage theft to file a complaint with the department and affirmed that all complaints are reviewed. 

Modeled after similar programs in San Francisco and Santa Clara County, New Haven’s proposed ordinance is grounded in the argument that wage theft is a public health issue — justifying the involvement of the city Department of Health. A 2014 American Journal of Public Health study found that because wage theft contributes to income insecurity, it is linked to hunger, homelessness and other public health issues.

Coburn and Terri Gerstein, founder and director of New York University’s Wagner Labor Initiative, see suspending business licenses as a far bigger disincentive from breaking labor laws than simply requiring employers to pay back the stolen wages. 

“If [employers] have their license suspended for five days, that’s real, that’s reputational harm, that’s income,” Gerstein said. “And also, why should businesses be able to get licenses … if they’re just repeatedly not paying their workers?”

Proposed city ordinance faces legal barriers

After Coburn proposed the ordinance, attorney Patricia King, who represents the city of New Haven, wrote that state law does not permit municipal departments of health to suspend or revoke business licenses in wage theft cases. She added that, unlike San Francisco, New Haven does not have a city labor standards enforcement office that could inform the Department of Health if businesses violated labor laws.

Gerstein, who previously served as Labor Bureau Chief in the New York Attorney General’s Office, argues that attorneys can choose to interpret the law liberally. She noted that California also did not have a law explicitly allowing its city departments of health to revoke licenses because of wage theft.

“As someone who worked in government for a long time, when people say that something can’t be done… another lawyer reviewing the same information might have come to a different conclusion,” Gerstein said. 

Still, California attorneys highlighted a statute requiring all licensees to follow state and federal laws, allowing San Francisco and Santa Clara County to implement license revocation programs.

King questioned the legality of the proposed city ordinance. In her opinion, there are two possible legal alternatives to the proposed ordinance. 

First, she recommended assigning a New Haven police officer as a liaison between the DOL and local community members with pending workplace complaints. She later wrote to the News that the officer would not have the authority to aid the DOL’s investigations, so this would not reduce the DOL’s case backlog. And New Haven Police Department Officer Christian Bruckhart questioned the feasibility of this recommendation, noting that the NHPD has faced an officer shortage for several years. 

Another alternative, King said, would be a city ordinance requiring businesses applying for new or renewed licenses to comply with state and federal employment laws. Similar ordinances have been adopted in Jersey City, NJ, Somerville, MA and Northampton, MA.

Since HAVEN, the Yale clinic where Coburn volunteers, is focused on a public health approach to wage theft, its members have zeroed in on King’s licensing suggestion, he said. Coburn described it as a “very promising option” that captured the spirit of the original proposal, and said he is optimistic that the ordinance will eventually be implemented.

Yet in the past year, the Yale clinic has not completed a new proposed ordinance based on the city’s feedback, nor have they met with city alders about a tweaked proposal. 

Both James Bhandary-Alexander, director of the HAVEN medical-legal partnership, and city alder Sarah Miller, who was involved in early conversations about the ordinance, declined the News’ requests for an interview. Miller explained that “no further progress” has been made so far on the proposal, and Bhandary-Alexander wrote that “it is being held up a bit by the current total chaos,” alluding to the second Trump administration’s impact on New Haven.

John DeStefano — who served as mayor of New Haven from 1994 to 2014, when immigrant community organizers first began raising the question of how the city could enforce state wage claim laws — put it more bluntly. “The fact that nothing happened is, in fact, a decision,” he said.

20 years of city inaction: advocates struggle to secure protection from wage theft 

Since its formation in 2002, ULA has advocated on behalf of immigrants who have experienced wage theft. Undocumented immigrants are especially vulnerable to labor exploitation, as they are overrepresented as workers in industries plagued by wage theft, like agriculture, food services and hotel work. Immigrants also tend to be reluctant to report wage theft because of language barriers and fears of interacting with federal immigration authorities.

ULA has also unsuccessfully spearheaded multiple efforts for the local enforcement of state wage laws.

The first of those efforts began in 2004, amid calls for city immigration reform from ULA, St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church and immigrant advocacy group Junta for Progressive Action. In conversations with DeStefano and other city officials, the organizations identified seven policy recommendations, including the enforcement of criminal wage laws by the NHPD.

DeStefano oversaw the implementation of three of the groups’ recommendations, although no progress was made on the proposed police enforcement of wage laws.

In 2014, ULA organizers submitted a letter outlining recommended wage theft programs to Toni Harp, then-mayor of New Haven. The organization proposed license revocations, quicker criminal prosecution of employers that committed wage theft and a database rendering employers that violated labor laws ineligible for city contracts and tax incentives. None of ULA’s three proposals got off the ground, according to Lugo.

In conversations with the News, DeStefano and Harp struggled to recall the details of the wage theft programs proposed during their respective terms. While none of ULA’s ideas faced strong opposition when they were introduced, the former mayors were skeptical about the feasibility of the proposed programs. DeStefano doubted the city’s ability to staff the programs, and Harp was unsure if undocumented immigrants trusted the police enough to report labor law violations.

Lugo highlighted a minor success in 2010, when the NHPD agreed to assist ULA’s efforts to recover stolen wages from employers. After ULA organizers attempted to contact an employer accused of wage theft, calling for the employer to repay the wronged employee upfront, rather than undergoing a lengthy DOL case, an NHPD officer would support those efforts by sending the employer a message urging them to meet with ULA. 

But since these efforts were a “formality” without any real enforcement power, Lugo said, they were not successful in convincing employers to negotiate with ULA and soon ceased. NHPD Chief Karl Jacobson, who joined the NHPD in 2007, was unaware of the initiative described by Lugo. He thinks these were likely efforts by an individual officer, rather than a department-wide policy.

Lugo, city officials grapple with lack of local progress on wage theft

Several former and current city officials flagged the unknown scope of the issue as a factor in the city’s lack of action in tackling wage theft. 

Between 2018 and April 2023, the Connecticut DOL received over 13,000 worker complaints, averaging over 2,700 cases each year. Specifically in New Haven, Lugo said ULA assists victims in 20 to 30 wage theft cases annually, though he called this the “tip of the iceberg.”

“With wage theft, there are so many workers whose rights are being violated who do not come forward, either because they don’t know their rights or because of fear of retaliation, fear of losing their job,” Gerstein, the NYU labor law expert, told the News.

Bruckhart, the NHPD’s public information officer, echoed former Mayor Harp’s point about undocumented immigrants being reluctant to contact the police if they experience wage theft and other labor exploitation, despite New Haven’s status as a sanctuary city — a municipality that discourages local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration authorities. Current Mayor Justin Elicker estimates that only one or two wage theft cases make their way to the NHPD each year, contributing to the uncertainty around the issue’s prevalence.

Lugo expressed frustration about the lack of local change to address wage theft, despite over two decades of advocacy. Past ULA efforts around wage theft have been met by city resistance, he noted. Lugo has been arrested multiple times in connection with ULA’s protests of businesses that allegedly committed wage theft.

He was especially incensed by a January 2023 Board of Alders public hearing about proposed revisions to the city charter, during which an alder cut off a ULA member testifying about facing wage theft and sexual harassment from her employer. This prompted Lugo, the woman providing testimony and two dozen other ULA members to walk out of the meeting.

Lugo believes the alders’ refusal to hear immigrant testimony reflects the larger disinterest among city officials and a lack of political will to address wage theft.

Elicker disagreed with Lugo’s view that the city has not done enough to address wage theft. He emphasized the legal challenges that King, the city’s attorney, raised in connection with HAVEN’s initial proposal.

“We would, of course, want to do more to help address wage theft if we have those tools,” he said. “But I wouldn’t frame this as, ‘if only the city cared about this issue, we could do something more.’ Our assessment is we can’t do anything more under state statute.”

Challenges to address wage theft at the state level

King, Elicker and other city officials also pointed to insufficient funding for the state DOL. The DOL currently employs 12 wage enforcement agents, according to Manalan, compared to 18 in November 2022. The department’s budget and staff cuts have coincided with its growing case backlog.

“The proper place to direct advocacy energy is towards more resources for the Department of Labor at the state, because that’s the main mechanism, the primary mechanism, to enforce wage theft violations, and it’s very clear they don’t have enough resources,” Elicker said. 

Yet state legislators have failed to pass bills that would have increased the state’s number of wage and hour inspectors, who ensure that employers are complying with labor laws, in the two most recent legislative sessions. A similar bill, introduced in the current legislative session, was added to the calendar for the state House of Representatives on March 27 but has not advanced since then.

Local 269 President Xavier Gordon, who heads the union that represents the DOL’s wage and hour inspectors, attributed the previous two bills’ failure to the “powerful corporate lobby” that discourages lawmakers from increasing state spending.

Brian Anderson — legislative and political director for Council 4, which encapsulates Local 269 and other unions for Connecticut’s public employees — echoed Gordon’s argument, pointing to two major lobbyist groups: the Connecticut Business Industry Association and the Connecticut Yankee Institute.

“Their mission is to cut the state budget so that corporate executives pay as little in taxes as possible,” Anderson wrote to the News, referring to the fact that tax revenue partially funds the state budget. “By attempting to suppress the budget and eliminate revenue that could hire more DOL wage and hour inspectors, they aim to ensure that laws designed to protect workers are unenforceable so that the balance of power remains on the side of corporations and the rich.”

Both groups have lobbied against loosening the state’s fiscal guardrails — a strict state spending cap instated in 2017 — in the past. Yet spokespeople for the groups emphasized that they did not directly oppose either of the bills that would have increased DOL funding. Indeed, the public hearing testimony for both bills is solely composed of supportive statements from activists and victims of wage theft.

Like Elicker, DeStefano thinks the unclear scope of wage theft on a statewide level was likely the main factor behind the bills’ failure.

“There are hundreds and hundreds of issues that meaningfully affect people and their lives and their families that don’t come to resolution in legislative sessions,” he said. “Sometimes things don’t move because they’re not big matters to other folks.”

City officials, activists double down on immigrant protections 

The challenges to address wage theft on the state level again raise the question of how New Haven officials can fight the issue on the local level. 

Although the HAVEN clinic’s proposed ordinance is still at a standstill, labor law expert Gerstein outlined a host of alternative ways municipalities can fight wage theft. Other cities have established worker protection units to streamline the criminal prosecutions of employers that violate labor laws, have carried out stop-work orders against offending businesses and have formed municipal labor standards offices to directly enforce labor laws.

Coburn and Ward 15 Alder Frank Redente, who represents part of Fair Haven, the city’s immigrant enclave, pointed to the actions of the second Trump administration as a potential influence on the fate of the ordinance. With President Donald Trump promising to nix federal funding for sanctuary cities like New Haven, Redente said he and other city officials are especially focused on protecting the city’s immigrant community.

“Issues around the dignity of workers — workers generally, and also around the workers who are most affected by the misconduct that we’re targeting, who are immigrant workers — will be really central the next four years,” Coburn said.

Lugo remains skeptical about the city’s willingness to address wage theft. Right now, his priority is getting city officials to understand the wide-reaching impact of the issue.

Though former and current city officials expressed uncertainty about the issue’s scope in the city, several of them cited New Haven’s most notorious examples of wage theft: Gourmet Heaven, a 24-hour deli often frequented by Yale students, shut down in 2015 after its owner was charged with withholding over $250,000 in wages. Another infamous example is that of Italian pastry shop Rocco’s Bakery, whose owner was found to have underpaid and physically and sexually abused his undocumented immigrant employees between 2007 and 2008.

Lugo hopes to keep holding protests outside of offending storefronts to boost awareness of the city’s wage theft problem. He continues to turn over one question in his head: “How can we create these scandals so they can no longer be blind to the reality that we are experiencing downtown?”

As for Vazquez, the construction worker who has yet to receive $5,000 in owed compensation, she and a dozen former coworkers submitted their pay stubs and other documentation of the wage theft experienced to the state DOL in mid-2022. Three years later, they’re still waiting for justice to be served — and so Bella Vazquez continues to tell her story.

“What are they waiting for?” Vazquez asked in Spanish, referring to the DOL’s wage enforcement agents. “Others don’t dare to denounce [their employers] because they see that we still haven’t accomplished anything. So, what are [the DOL] doing? They’re wasting time.”
In Governor Ned Lamont’s biennial budget proposal, he allocated $83.3 million to the DOL’s budget for the 2025 to 2026 fiscal year, a nearly 7 percent increase from the previous fiscal year.

The post Unsettled scores: 20 years of stalled wage theft solutions in New Haven appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The metropolitan area has a rental vacancy rate of 3.1 percent, the third lowest in the country, indicating a cutthroat market. Rents have grown 48.19 percent since the pandemic, and the number of people experiencing homelessness in the region more than doubled in the last year, an increase that is directly linked to more expensive rental prices. 

Over 500 on-campus beds are currently unoccupied, according to Ferentz Lafargue, the associate dean of residential college life, and the New Haven housing market is fierce. Nonetheless, more and more Yale College students are choosing to move off campus — twice as many this academic year than in 2019-20. According to Dean of Student Affairs Melanie Boyd, a historic 59 percent of the class of 2026 currently live in off-campus housing. 

Many students move off campus to live with friends from different residential colleges or to guarantee themselves single bedrooms. Others cite concerns about the availability of on-campus housing or the possibility of being forced out of their residential college. 

However, the gradual outpouring of students into adjacent neighborhoods is pushing locals farther away from campus and is one of many factors contributing to increased demand for housing in an ever-hot market, New Haven landlords and residents told the News. With a focus on ensuring residential colleges are a cornerstone of undergraduate life, Yale College administrators are pushing to bring students back to campus. 

An exodus in the wake of COVID-19

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, a steady rate of about 16 percent of undergraduates lived in off-campus housing each year. But during the 2020-21 academic year, an unprecedented 62 percent of students lived off campus due to Yale’s strict pandemic policies. 

This year, about 26 percent of the student body, or 1,757 students, live off campus — a number almost double the 982 students who lived off-campus in the last pre-pandemic year.

Three Yale administrators attributed this recent exodus to off-campus housing directly to the pandemic. 

Because so many students either were required or chose to live off campus during the 2020-21 academic year, a greater number of students were able to pass down their apartments to other students, according to Lafargue. Students often recommend their apartments to younger friends, who in turn take over the lease. This made the transition off campus more straightforward than it was before, Lafargue believes.

During the 2020-21 school year, classes were conducted remotely through a “residential/remote model.” The model meant that first-years got to live on campus during the fall semester and switched with sophomores for the spring semester. The University also adopted strict social distancing policies, including grab-and-go dining hall meals and restrictions on social gatherings of more than 10 people. 

Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis suggested that at least some of the students who moved off campus did so because they were dissatisfied with masking restrictions and dining hall policies. Additionally, the class of 2025 became unusually large after the “COVID bump” — a swelling of the student population because of the large percentage of students that took gap years or deferred enrollment — which increased demand for on-campus housing in the following years, causing more students to move off-campus when residential colleges threatened to reach capacity.  

Lewis largely attributed preferences for off-campus housing to sweeping shifts in undergraduate social habits. In the 1980s, he said, undergraduates could have “keg parties in the [residential] colleges,” and the social scene revolved around the residential colleges. Now, due to legal concerns, the party scene has shifted primarily off campus, with students following, Lewis said. 

New Haven is “a nicer place to live, a safer place to live than it was a few decades ago,” he added, making off-campus housing more desirable. Meanwhile, financial aid has expanded, so more students are likely to be able to afford to live off campus, Lewis said. Students can request a refund of the share of their financial aid that goes toward housing costs to use for off-campus rent. 

According to the Yale College Council’s 2024 fall survey, the most common reasons to move off campus come down to better amenities, the opportunity to live with friends from different residential colleges, concerns about the on-campus housing lottery and the cost of Yale room and board. Lewis cited similar findings from undergraduate surveys, adding that students also like to control what they eat and have their own kitchens.

“It was more likely than not that I would have gotten a single, but I just wasn’t willing to take the risk of three consecutive years living in a cramped double,” Jake Siesel ’27 told the News. “So having the opportunity to secure [a single] months in advance and not be beholden to the lottery system was definitely worth the pain of the [off-campus housing] process.”

Now, administrators are aiming to reverse the push towards off-campus living. 

Lafargue wrote that the College is “actively looking for ways to retain more students on campus,” which includes its efforts to add additional dormitories, Arnold and McClellan halls, to the undergraduate housing inventory and “to create as much parity across the [residential] colleges as possible.” 

In November, Boyd announced changes to undergraduate housing policy that include eventually giving juniors priority over seniors in on-campus room selection. The point, she wrote in an email sent to rising seniors, is to make it “less likely that [juniors] will feel pressure” to move off campus once they have better odds in the housing lottery. Once students move off campus their junior year, it is very unlikely that they will return as seniors, she added, according to “historical patterns.” 

In an email sent to students before spring break, Lewis shared that “enhancing our residential communities” is a part of Yale College’s strategic plan to create “a community of learning.” Lewis has convened a task force within the Council of the Heads of College “to give focused attention” to undergraduate housing.

“I felt like I wanted to live in a place that really felt like a community or with people that I really feel at home with, and I was not getting that through the college system necessarily,” Adam Bear ’27 said when explaining why he’ll be moving off campus next year. He also keeps kosher and finds it “kind of annoying” that there aren’t always many options for him in his college’s dining hall. 

Lewis said administrators are trying to speed up the annexing process, or when students are given on-campus housing outside of their residential college, so that students know earlier if they’re being annexed. He’d rather students find out about annex status and then choose to move off campus than preemptively find off-campus housing to avoid the possibility of annexation. 

If Siesel were certain he would get an on-campus single, that would have “changed [his] calculus slightly.” Yet, by the time the housing lottery draw happens, there aren’t many housing options left in New Haven, compelling students to make housing choices early, he said, suggesting moving the lottery to earlier in the academic year. 

“In an ideal world, if the system were to be different, I’d still be living on campus, but just the nature of how it works makes it much more difficult,” he said.

Regardless, Boyd assured students in the November email that “Yale College has long had enough space to house all eligible students who want to live on campus.”

Students move out, forming an off-campus “bubble”

Undergraduate students who opt to live off campus tend to move into apartments or houses near central campus, with houses providing an option for larger groups of students to live together. 

According to Carol Horsford, the founder of Farnam Realty Group, which manages thousands of units in the New Haven area, the houses and apartments closest to central campus receive the highest demand from students — and are also the most expensive.

Undergraduate students tend to sign leases much earlier than graduate students, Horsford said, with the earliest groups expressing interest almost a year before the lease would begin. 

31 High St., which was historically occupied by the all-gender social group Edon Club, is usually the first of her properties to be snagged, with students expressing interest as early as September or October of the year before they move in. 

When looking for off-campus housing, Siesel, who will be living in 31 High St. next year, prioritized proximity to Yale’s Cross Campus and a space large enough to live with a large group of friends.

In Horsford’s experience, aside from location, undergraduates’ main priorities are in-unit laundry and air conditioning — amenities that are not available in on-campus housing. Most 21st-century students, she said, are accustomed to living with these features, and are willing to pay higher rents to maintain their living standards.

If Yale wants to encourage students to stay on campus, installing central air conditioning could be a good place to start, Horsford suggested.

According to Horsford, a room in one of the houses she manages averages about $1,500 per month, but prices can range anywhere from $875 to $2,000 per bedroom, depending on factors such as location and size of the individual room.

On-campus housing for Yale undergraduates not receiving financial aid costs $11,300 for the 2024-25 academic year. Divided over 10 months — August to May, a standard academic year — this comes down to $1,130 per month. Off-campus students paying $1,500 per month in rent pay $18,000 per year for a 12-month lease, $6,700 more than students paying for housing on campus. Many students, however, look to sublet their rooms over the summer to offset additional costs.

Farnam also owns The Elm apartment complex at 104 Howe St., which is described as “premier luxury off campus living” and is popular with Yale students. A studio at The Elm starts at $1,800 per month, while two-bedrooms start at $3,250. 

Siesel, who does not receive financial aid from Yale, said the additional cost of living off-campus is worth the assurance of getting to live with friends and having a single.

“I do think that your money goes a little further off campus. You can get a little nicer place,” Cyrus Kenkare ’26, who is moving off campus next year, said. 

Although many off-campus options are more expensive than on-campus housing, some students are able to find places that cost about the same as, or even less than, Yale room fees. 

For Bear, ensuring that his apartment would not cost more than an on-campus dorm room was a priority, and he was even able to find options that were “much less,” he said. Like Siesel, he also prioritized proximity to central campus.  

According to Lewis, a study from the Yale College Dean’s Office found that wealthier students are more likely to live off-campus, although plenty of students on financial aid use their room and board refund to pay off-campus rent. 

In 2024, Horsford created Bull Dog Housing, which lists the properties in her company’s portfolio that are typically rented by undergraduate students. Most properties occupy the downtown, Dwight, Dixwell and East Rock neighborhoods. 

Apartment complexes such as Crown Towers, Cambridge Oxford Apartments, The Elmhurst and The Taft are also popular with undergraduates and are located in those same neighborhoods, although the buildings vary in price and luxe.

From Horsford’s perspective, undergraduates are constrained to a “bubble” within a 15-minute walk of central campus. 

Graduate students are more likely to venture farther out, especially because many of the graduate and professional schools are farther away from the main campus. East Rock, Prospect Hill and Wooster Square host a number of these students, who can easily travel to and from campus using the Yale Shuttle.

Last summer, Yale demolished Helen Hadley Hall, a dormitory with 177 single rooms for graduate students. After this, the Yale Graduate Housing Office partnered with University Properties — which manages Yale’s commercial properties, including retail stores, office spaces and residential units — to provide alternative accommodations for graduate and professional students.

Chelsea Company manages 12 apartment buildings, including The Elmhurst, and rents to dozens of Yale students — undergraduate, graduate and professional — each year, according to the director of property management, Neil Currie. Year after year, Chelsea’s buildings have a 100 percent occupancy rate. 

The buildings closest to campus are “almost 100 percent undergrads,” according to Currie, while others house more than 90 percent graduate students. 

Off-campus students heat up local housing market

The gradual outpouring of students into local neighborhoods both fuels competition in the already-hot New Haven housing market and broader demographic shifts in the areas closest to campus. 

Currie, the property manager of Chelsea Company, said that he has seen several New Haven natives choose to live a couple of blocks farther from campus as students have trickled into adjacent neighborhoods like Dwight.

“The average income of a Yale student’s parents is greater than the average income of a New Haven resident, so when looking at what a parent can afford to give their child for living off campus, the deeper pockets can drive the costs higher,” Currie said. “Yale students have a certain budget, and that budget is beyond the range of someone who’s just working in a shop or a restaurant in New Haven. That’s going to push those people further out.”

The average annual income in New Haven is $34,482, the U.S. Census Bureau reports. According to a survey of Yale College’s class of 2028 conducted by the News, approximately 76 percent of students come from households making at least $45,000 per year, with 43 percent of students reporting annual household incomes above $150,000.

However, students’ purchasing power is not the only thing driving prices up, Currie suggested. 

According to Currie, if Yale were to reduce its on-campus housing costs, students, who often do not want to pay more to live off-campus, would be more likely to stay on campus. This decline in demand for off-campus housing could cause prices to fall, at least close to campus, Currie suggested, as the market responds to that shift in demand.

David Schleicher, a professor of property and urban law at Yale Law School, explained that New Haven’s housing market suffers from a simple supply and demand problem. 

“The sense that there is a lack of housing or [that] housing has become either too expensive or hard to find in New Haven — it’s a product of an increase in people wanting it and housing takes a little while to be built,” he said. “So when there’s an increase in demand, you see a spike in prices, or ultimately some kind of limitation on the ability of the market to provide housing.” 

As demand for housing increases, as it has among Yale undergraduates for the past five years, prices will continue to rise until the market responds with more units, Schleicher said.

While the city has a goal to create 10,000 new units in New Haven in the next 10 years, it has also become more restrictive about building new housing, Schleicher said, through more stringent zoning legislation. One ordinance, for example, mandates a minimum quota of affordable units in every new building. According to Schleicher, those types of regulations will ultimately reduce the number of new units that get built.

Currie added that he thinks mandating affordable units will drive up the cost of non-affordable units, so that developers can compensate for the losses incurred by affordable units. 

“If the city had policies that encouraged new construction with fewer hurdles to jump through, that would allow for more housing to be available at the lower end of the price spectrum,” Currie said. 

To Lewis, the number of Yale undergraduates seeking off-campus housing is a “relatively small” portion of the total Yale impact on the local real estate market. However, he said that undergraduates are likely to seek apartments or houses with multiple bedrooms that would usually cater to families or even multiple families. In this way, Lewis said, undergraduates may have a notable impact on the housing market in close proximity to Yale, but he doubted that the impact is felt across the entire city.

Kevin McCarthy, an East Rock resident and former state housing policy analyst, agreed that while the citywide impact of undergraduates living off-campus may be trivial, their presence on the market for large apartments or houses is relevant.

“I suspect it’s fairly common for a group of undergrads to rent a large apartment or a house, and that market is particularly tight,” he said. “If you’re an ordinary family with four kids, finding a three-bedroom or four-bedroom in town is really challenging.”

He added that landlords may be incentivized to acquire housing near Yale or make properties more appealing to students because students tend to be reliable rent payers.

More notable, McCarthy suspects, are the thousands of graduate students who have historically lived off-campus and are often in the position to pay above-market rents. The closing of Helen Hadley Hall last summer, without the creation of any new student housing, has “a negative impact” on the local housing market, he said, “because the students who were moved from Hadley Hall to University Properties essentially pushed out other grad students who would be living in University Properties.”

McCarthy said he voiced his concerns to the Graduate Housing Office, although he added that the people he spoke to did not “seem to care that they’re exacerbating a housing shortage.” The office did not respond to the News’ request for comment. 

Ultimately, it would be in the best interest of both the University and New Haven, McCarthy said, for Yale to reduce the number of students living off campus. 

What can Yale do? 

Eli Sabin ’22 LAW ’26, a New Haven native and alder for parts of Downtown and East Rock, echoed McCarthy’s call for Yale to provide more housing for students, as well as do work to improve the quality of existing units. 

College administrators have been trying to do just that, Lewis said, through recent initiatives such as ensuring that all dormitory common rooms have permanent furniture. 

However, the matter is more complicated than Yale just building more dormitories, Sabin acknowledged. If Yale were to build more student housing, those properties would likely become tax-exempt. Nearly 57 percent of real estate in New Haven — valued at more than $10 billion is tax-exempt already; the University and its hospital system own 43.4 percent of that property for a combined total of more than $4.3 billion tax-exempt realty. 

In contrast, if a new building is built by the private market and occupied by local residents and students alike, then they will all be paying taxes to the city, which would enable New Haven to provide more services to residents.  

According to New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker, part of the creation of Yale’s Center for Inclusive Growth is to help New Haven better coordinate with the University as the school’s population grows. While much of the center’s work has focused on creating and supporting small businesses, he said that members of the organization have expressed interest in ensuring that housing becomes an important component of the center’s goals. 

“It’s important that Yale understands that its financial contribution to the city is hugely important to the city’s success,” Elicker told the News. “I think there certainly could be a good role that Yale could play to help support the development of housing.” 

As it stands now, the College is looking to keep more students on campus, through new policies like giving juniors priority over seniors in the housing lottery. It remains to be seen if these moves will help that goal come to fruition. 

“The empty beds speak to Yale’s inability to effectively distribute people to bedrooms and suites across campus, and in an ideal world, there should be no empty beds on campus,” Siesel said. “Yale should take concrete steps to ensure that every single bed on campus is filled.”

Students in their first four semesters of enrollment are required to live on campus unless they are married or are at least 21 years old.

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Yet, when Ikenna Ugbaja ’25 walked off of Yale’s varsity football team his sophomore year, he surprisingly lost a world of privileges beyond sporting a varsity athlete backpack around campus and trips to the Yale Bowl for practice. 

Unbeknownst to many outside of 12 percent of the students who are athletes, student-athlete privileges include preferential treatment at Yale’s Student Health Center. Varsity athletes are siloed into a different office on Yale Health’s second floor, separate from the Student Health Center, which serves the rest of the student body and is infamous for long wait times and lack of transparency, according to ten non-athlete students interviewed for this story. 

At the Yale Student Health Center, each varsity athlete is assigned their own Athletic Medicine doctor. Athletes have faster access to appointments and a lower patient-to-doctor ratio. They are offered services unavailable or provided at a higher price to the rest of the student population, including full-body imaging, mental health and nutrition counseling, athletic cardiology and on-site physical therapy. 

When asked if he thought being an athlete had helped him previously navigate Yale Health, Ubgaja said, “Yes. I do think it’s easier as an athlete to get medical care at Yale Health. It’s two different worlds.”

“It was so, so easy to make an appointment [at Yale Health]. I had zero wait times,” Eleanor Lockhart ’26, a former coxswain for the varsity heavyweight crew team and former sports reporter for the News, said of her time as a Yale athlete. 

Tim Brown, the director of Yale Health Communications, explained to the News that “as distinct departments, [Student Health and Athletic Medicine operate] independently to address the specific needs of its respective patient groups,” as required by the National Collegiate Athletic Association.  

Brown confirmed that all eligible students are assigned a primary care provider after enrolling. He added that for varsity athletes specifically, these providers are primary care physicians who are trained in sports medicine. According to Brown, this ensures that doctors “are equipped to handle the specialized care needs of varsity student-athletes,” in addition to treating orthopedic needs and routine primary care issues. 

Behind closed doors on the second floor 

Upon enrollment at Yale, each varsity athlete is assigned a doctor within the Athletic Medicine office to act as their general physician, according to Lockhart. Within their first few weeks on campus, student-athletes have an introductory check-up with their doctor to ensure that they are healthy and ready to compete. 

The News asked ten non-varsity-athlete undergraduates across different grades — all enrolled on the Yale specialty healthcare plan — if they knew their primary care provider at Yale Health, telling them that Yale Health’s Tim Brown asserted that all students, regardless of varsity athletic status, are assigned one. None of these students knew they even had such a provider, much less who the provider was. 

After these initial checkups, the appointment request process for varsity athletes runs “smoothly” over the phone or through the Yale MyChart website, Lockhart added. 

MyChart portal allows anyone admitted to Yale Health to manage their healthcare interactions digitally and is used by student-athletes and non-athletes alike. Varsity athletes, however, can also directly correspond with their assigned Athletic Medicine doctor.

“Inherently, knowing that you can see the same doctor and ask follow-up questions is really important and very beneficial,” said Charlie Williams ’26, who walked onto the varsity Track & Field team in the fall of her first year. 

In contrast, non-athlete students send general “talk to a doctor” messages on their MyChart portal. 

Four non-athlete students reported that if they receive a follow-up, it typically comes from an internal medicine nurse practitioner or physician’s assistant rather than a certified medical doctor, given that only five are on staff for all of Yale Student Health. Student-athletes noted that the face-to-face contact they received at Athletic Medicine was typically with an MD.

A 2023 News article reported approximately 770 Yale College students are on varsity athletic teams. According to the Yale Athletic Medicine website, the medical team comprises 22 healthcare specialists: the 16 trainers assigned to specific sports, two primary care head physicians, two surgeons, one doctor of osteopathic medicine and one nurse coordinator. In all, there is one healthcare provider for every 35 varsity athletes. 

Conversely, the general Student Health team consists of 20 people, only five of whom are doctors, for the approximate 5,980 remaining students. In other words, the Student Health program allocates one healthcare provider to serve every 300 students, not including graduate students or other Yale affiliates who receive healthcare at Yale Health. 

Because the Yale Athletic Medicine staff treats a smaller subsection of the student population, “they tended to have a lot of last-minute or immediate availability,” Lockhart said. 

In addition to their Athletic Medicine general physician, each of Yale’s 35 varsity athletics teams has an athletic trainer to treat their team. According to their staff directory, Yale Athletics employs 16 trainers. Most trainers have one or two teams under their care and can treat all injuries and illnesses, regardless of whether they are athletics-related or not.

If the doctors at Athletic Medicine cannot treat a student’s concern, they can directly refer them to doctors in other departments, bypassing the bureaucratic delays other students recall facing before being seen, Lockhart noted. 

In the fall of her sophomore year, Lockhart inquired with Yale Gynecology about getting an IUD inserted on campus. 

At first, they told her there was no availability for a first-time consultation for at least two months. Hoping to complete the procedure faster, she went to Yale Athletic Medicine to ask her general practitioner there for advice, who advised her to tell the Gynecology department that Athletic Medicine sent her. 

“[It’s] a little crazy, considering that my IUD has nothing to do with my athletic performance,” she recalled. “They had me wait [for] 15 minutes and saw me for the first appointment that day.” Following her initial consultation, Lockhart scheduled the insertion procedure for a week later. 

“If I had done it through the normal route, it would have taken me months,” she added. 

“Two different worlds”: Navigating Yale Health as a non-athlete

Coming into Yale, Ugbaja was a healthy student-athlete. It wasn’t until the football team’s intense practice schedule that he realized his body’s difficulty with oxygen intake. 

During his first year, he suffered an episode of breathing difficulties during practice and was rushed off the field. He scheduled cardiology exams and tests through Yale Athletic Medicine and Yale Cardiology, all of which occurred quickly and led to his diagnosis of a genetic lung condition. 

While Ugbaja’s coach had been a staunch advocate for him when navigating the bureaucracies of Yale Health during his first year, things got more complicated in his sophomore year. After quitting the team for personal reasons, he was now flying solo. 

Despite his diagnosis less than a year prior, Ugbaja recalls being bounced between different departments, all of which were unable to help him schedule appointments or contact doctors. He even had trouble accessing his medical records from the previous school year. 

“I never got a test that whole school year … There was also just general unhelpfulness: the lack of response. [I would try] to use MyChart and schedule things, and then call to make sure that the [appointment] was scheduled, and then they’d say, ‘Oh, we didn’t see anything that was scheduled. Nothing came in.’” 

Head Athletic Trainer Jason Cordone, who treats Yale’s football team, did not respond to multiple requests for comment regarding Ugbaja after initially agreeing to be interviewed.

Lily Kim Scott ’27, a sophomore ballet dancer at Yale, also had difficulties with the disorganization of Yale Health. 

In fall 2023, Scott tore the MPFL ligament in her knee in a dance class. While Ubgaja was rushed off the field and given medical attention during his on-field respiratory episode, Scott had to Uber herself to the Yale New Haven Hospital despite getting injured in a formal Yale course. Doctors told her she needed an MRI and recommended doing the scans on campus for efficiency and accessibility. She was discharged with an MRI referral, which she took to Yale Health the next day. 

Scott was then turned away and told MRIs were not a service offered at the center because she had waived Yale’s hospitalization and specialty care coverage and only had the Yale basic insurance plan. Although her external insurance plan covered diagnostic imaging, they told her the tests could not be done at Yale. 

Scott also inquired about physical therapy options since her doctors at Yale-New Haven Hospital had recommended she start sessions. The Physical Therapy office at Yale Health told her they couldn’t provide her with that service either. Scott ended up having to Uber to Orange, Connecticut, multiple times a week for physical therapy. 

Professor Daniel Ulbricht, the teacher of Scott’s “Ballet Now” class, works with dancers at the beginning of the course to mitigate injuries. When asked about injury prevention and management services on campus for dancers, Ulbricht said he was “unaware” of any trainers or physical therapists. 

Ulbricht added that the Theater, Dance and Performance Studies Department does not have a set of guidelines to help faculty address cases like Scott’s. In comparison, the Yale Athletics website features extensive resources on student-athlete medicine and injury procedures, including a thirteen-section student athletic medicine handbook. 

Ulbricht proposed dance specialists in the Yale Orthopedic Department and in-case-of-emergency trainers for students to contact if they are hurt during rehearsal as potential resources. 

“It all comes down to awareness and being proactive … [the] responsibility is on both the individual and Yale,” he said. 

After attempting to be proactive with her recovery, Scott felt frustrated. When she turned to her friends for support, she discovered that one of her suitemates, a varsity tennis player, was receiving treatment from the Yale Health Physical Therapy office even though she had also waived Yale’s specialty coverage. 

“She’s able to go to their team’s personal trainer and a physical therapist. I think each team has their own that’s assigned. I know she’s gone in and gotten massages or ice baths, things like that,” Scott said.

These expenses are covered if the student is on Yale’s specialization coverage health plan. If they waive Yale’s specialty coverage plan, they can still access these resources, as long as their personal insurance plan can cover the cost or the student pays out of pocket, according to the student-athlete secondary insurance guide.

Additionally, all varsity athletes, those who waive specialty coverage and those who do not, have access to services at Yale Athletic Medicine — such as physical training sessions, one-on-one appointments with a primary physician and nutrition counseling — for free. 

These same services that fall under basic Athletic Medicine care are not offered to other students who waive the specialty coverage plan. In other words, in addition to receiving expedited referrals and treatment, non-varsity-athlete students pay a premium for services available free of charge to varsity athletes.

When asked about other special Athletic Medicine services, like nutrition counseling and ice baths, Brown, the Yale Health communications director, reaffirmed the office’s commitment to “dedicated” services for student-athletes, required by the National Collegiate Athletic Association. 

“Certified athletic trainers who are care team members may refer varsity student-athletes to Athletic Medicine based on assessments made during varsity practices or competitions,” Brown wrote to the News. “This immediate response is vital for maintaining the student-athlete’s health and performance and is in accordance with NCAA Division I rules.” 

Access to Athletic Medicine does not extend to Yale’s higher-intensity club sports, including the cheer and rugby teams. 

Because injuries are so common in the sport, Yale men’s rugby hired its own trainer, separate from Yale Athletics, to treat players during practices or games. Alumni donations cover the cost. 

Rosa Alcala ’26, a former member of the Yale cheerleading team, said she felt it was “taboo” for team members to ask their coaching staff and Yale Athletics for a trainer and athletic medicine resources. She said there was no room in the budget to hire a cheer trainer, and the team does not have the robust alumni base that the rugby team has to fund a trainer independently.

Even if cheerleaders get injured during varsity athletics games — where trainers are always present for the competing athletes — trainers are “not allowed” to treat them, according to Alcala. 

During her first year, Alcala injured herself at a football game. Although she was bleeding profusely from her lip and nose, healthcare providers affiliated with Yale Athletics did not treat her and instead referred her to Yale Health.

“No one took a look at me, and it was up to me to go to Yale Health with no support of Athletics,” she said. In her experience, cheerleaders are instructed to sit out if injured at practice, but no formal medical examinations occur. 

Colleen Murphy, Yale Athletics’ director of communications, commented on behalf of the Yale Cheerleading Coach Danielle Vitagliano, noting that “members of the Yale Cheer team, similar to other students competing in club sports and intramurals, have access to care at Yale [Student] Health.”

In his response to the News, Brown did not explain the lack of physical therapy options for injured non-varsity athlete students who contribute to Yale’s extracurricular life, such as rugby players or dancers. He also reaffirmed that MRI imaging is available to all students who do not waive Yale Health’s Specialty Care Coverage plan. 

“When you have Athletic Medicine, and you’re able to go in that day or the next day, you’re much more inclined to actually take care of yourself,” Lockhart said. “It isn’t such a burden to schedule and be sure that you’re sticking with it … the disparity is so huge in scheduling ability and probably in quality of care.”

Yale Health is located at 55 Lock St. 

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Years of heightened tensions between the YPD and the Yale community erupted in 2019, when a Yale police officer was present during a police shooting that severely injured a 22-year-old Black woman. In 2022, a decades-old civilian complaint review committee known as the Police Advisory Board was revamped and given expanded powers to review complaints over officer conduct, rather than just the department’s responses to such complaints.

But by the time a wave of pro-Palestinian campus protests led to dozens of student arrests this past April and May, the Advisory Board ceased to exist. Mentions of the board disappeared from the Yale Police Department’s website over the summer. The board’s two student representatives graduated in May 2024 and were not replaced. When contacted for this story, Yale Police Chief Anthony Campbell stated through a communications officer that the advisory board is “not currently active.” 

Community calls for YPD reform post-shooting  

In the early morning hours of April 16, 2019, a Yale Police officer and a Hamden Police officer fired their weapons at Stephanie Washington and Paul Witherspoon, an unarmed young Black couple in a car in Newhallville. The Yale officer, who had been patrolling Yale’s Science Park around 4 a.m., had left his post to come to the assistance of Hamden officers responding to reports of an attempted armed robbery. Washington was rushed into surgery for serious but non-lethal spinal bullet wounds, which a State investigation ultimately determined were caused by the Hamden officer. She subsequently sued the University, unsuccessfully.

Exactly six months after the shooting, which sparked a wave of anti-YPD protests led by Yale and New Haven community members, the University commissioned an external review of the YPD. 21CP Solutions, a consulting firm led by members of former President Barack Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, embarked on an eight-month probe into the department’s standards and practices. Through listening sessions, interviews and reviews of YPD protocols, the consultants compiled a list of recommendations for improving the department’s responses to public safety concerns and its interactions with the community it aimed to serve.

Despite affirming the importance of departmental oversight, 21CP made no specific recommendations on an implementation method for such accountability in its 79-page resulting report. 

“We note simply that, to enhance community trust and confidence in the police and to alleviate the concerns of some community members that the University may be unduly protecting problematic officers, YPD and Yale should consider establishing an oversight mechanism for its internal investigations of officer performance,” the report reads. 

The report acknowledged that Yale “has created a Police Advisory Board” that “may fulfill an oversight function going forward.”

That advisory board was not new; the Yale Police Department had operated one for decades. The News’ archives confirm an Advisory Board’s existence as early as 1971, when it addressed a case in which a YPD officer was accused of asking one student to “bug” another student, sparking campus controversy. A University Police Advisory Board chaired by a criminology professor emerged to review the allegations, Richard Goldsby, then-Head of Pierson College, recalled.

The board’s early existence is also documented in the labor contracts between the University and the Yale Police Benevolent Association, or YPBA, the department’s union of officers and detectives. Officer Michael Hall, the YPBA’s current president, said that the contractual language about the board has remained the same for “nearly 40 years.” 

The latest police union contract, which expired in 2023, states that if the advisory board were to recommend disciplinary action against a member of the police department, any resulting penalty would need to meet the standards of just cause laid out in the contract.

Hall noted that the contract’s current language about the board has not been a contention in the ongoing negotiations for a new YPBA contract, and that these same guidelines will presumably be in the new contract when it is finalized.

Although the board has existed for decades, its operations were recently altered, Hall said. In 2022, the University changed the body from an “appellate review” board to an “initial inquiry” board, he said. 

Under the original board’s terms, members only oversaw appeals from civilians who were dissatisfied with the original disciplinary outcome of their complaint, or officers dissatisfied with the outcomes of complaints filed against them. The revised board would directly accept complaints through a form on the YPD’s website and provide recommendations to the YPD. Hall wrote that he believes the board underwent this change because of the “George Floyd incident/protests” of 2020.

In fall 2022, former YPD Chief Ronnell Higgins — who then worked as the University’s inaugural associate vice president for public safety — convened the group of seven who would comprise the revamped Advisory Board. The board members each represented different sectors of the University, as well as the New Haven community. 

Heather Calabrese, a strategic communications administrator in the Office of the Secretary, served as chair of the board. Caroline Lefever LAW ’24, a law student and member of Yale Law School’s policing clinic, represented graduate students, and Craig Birckhead-Morton ’24, a Yale College student who participated in activist circles, was the undergraduate representative. Former Head of Pierson College Stephen Davis represented the faculty, while Greg Kharabadze, a medical school administrator, was another staff representative. A third staff position was labeled “TBD.” YPD Lieutenant Christopher Halstead served as the board’s officer representative. Finally, John Lewis, a local pastor active in the Connecticut Center for Nonviolence, which holds sporadic training sessions with local police departments, was appointed to represent the New Haven community.

By February 2023, the names of the 2022-23 board’s seven members were posted on the Yale Police Department’s website. Months later, the website was updated to list the members of the 2023-24 board, unchanged except for the fact that Davis — who left New Haven for a year to pursue research —  was replaced by faculty members Sarah Mahurin and Arnim Dontes. The third “staff” slot labeled “TBD” remained unfilled. 

Sometime between June 3 and Sept. 14 of last year, all mentions of the board were wiped completely from the YPD’s website.

The board that wasn’t

Craig Birckhead-Morton — who became a board member during his junior year at Yale College — was involved in Black Students for Disarmament at Yale, a group active in protests after the 2019 shooting of Washington and Witherspoon. As its members graduated during Birckhead-Morton’s time at Yale, the group’s operations dwindled. Birckhead-Morton served as the Yale College Council’s inaugural “student organization liaison” in the 2022-23 school year. When Higgins invited the YCC president, Leleda Beraki ’24 SPH ’25, to serve as the undergraduate student representative to the Police Advisory Board, Beraki recommended Birckhead-Morton for the position.

Birckhead-Morton’s work on the board consisted of a tour of the Yale Police Department headquarters in February 2023 and a series of online training sessions in civilian complaint review, he said. Lewis, the New Haven representative, recalls only meeting the other members of the board “once or twice.”

Birckhead-Morton said he believed the board’s primary function was to review civilian complaints and advise the chief of police on how to respond. But Birckhead-Morton said that, to his knowledge, the department did not receive any complaints during his two-year tenure on the board, so the group never met.

In reality, the YPD did receive civilian complaints during Birckhead-Morton’s tenure. Yale Police Chief Anthony Campbell, who replaced Higgins as chief in summer 2022, said in November that the YPD has received “one to two” civilian complaint reports every year that he has worked there. 

While Birckhead-Morton served on the board, a complaint could be submitted online in two ways: directly to the Office of the Chief, or through the form on the Advisory Board’s webpage.

A police union document from 2022 delineating the Police Advisory Board’s terms and procedures specifies that the YPD must transmit a copy of a complaint it received and a summary of the investigation status to both the Advisory Board and the union within three days of receiving a complaint that warrants an investigation. If the chair of the board received a civilian complaint through the board’s online form, she would have 72 hours to transmit it to the YPD chief and police union leadership. Hall, the union president, said that — to his knowledge — the board never met to review any complaints received through its form.

Campbell, meanwhile, said that the board’s operations were mostly under the purview of Calabrese and the other board members, as well as the police union, whose contract establishes the parameters for how officers can face discipline. The chief’s office, Campbell said, was intentionally less involved in facilitating the board. 

“We didn’t run it, so we didn’t want to put our hand in it,” he said.

Calabrese declined to answer questions about her role on the board. Yale’s Office of Public Affairs and Communications provided a statement attributed to Calabrese, claiming the board is “not currently active; the university is reviewing the charter and considering refinements to its scope of advisory responsibilities.” That statement is identical to the one shared with the News by Campbell’s communications representative. Over the course of six months, a total of six University employees sent this exact statement to the News. 

Davis, the faculty representative, said he never actually served on the board because of his research leave during the 2023-24 academic year. Mahurin, his replacement, does not recall attending a meeting. Kharabadze left Yale this year. When reached for comment, he referred questions about the board to Calabrese, who did not respond. 

“We have nothing further to add to the information already provided, which is on behalf of the university, including Yale Public Safety and Heather Calabrese,” a public safety communications officer wrote in November.

Birckhead-Morton and Lefever both graduated from the University in May. In August, Birckhead-Morton asked the current Yale College Council president, Mimi Papathanasopoulos ’26, to nominate a student to replace him on the board. Unaware that the board had become inactive, Papathanasopoulos forwarded a nomination to Calabrese that month, but never heard back. 

2024 campus arrests reignite community tensions with YPD 

Birckhead-Morton last heard from the board on March 12, when a YPD assistant chief reached out to notify board members of an upcoming “in-person training,” according to emails reviewed by the News. That training was never scheduled, but Birckhead-Morton would encounter Lieutenant Halstead, the board’s officer representative, a final time before he graduated. 

Alongside Black Students for Disarmament, Birckhead-Morton participated in myriad left-leaning activist groups at the University, including Yalies for Palestine, a collective whose ranks swelled during the Israel-Hamas war that began on Oct. 7, 2023.

On Monday, April 22, 2024, Birckhead-Morton was one of 44 Yale students detained for criminal trespassing after three nights sleeping in a protest encampment on Beinecke Plaza, while their cluster of tents was cleared from the quadrangle.

In an April 30 email to Yale Public Safety Director Duane Lovello, YPD analyst Lisa Skelly-Byrnes noted that one of the “student leaders” arrested on April 22 was a member of the Advisory Board. She recounted having met Birckhead-Morton a year prior when he toured the YPD. 

In her email to Lovello, Skelly-Byrnes claimed the student had refused to shake her hand, and wrote that she later was told he “had ties to the NBPP” — the New Black Panther Party, a Black Power collective designated as a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center and other organizations for antisemitic comments attributed to its leaders. Birckhead-Morton said that he did not remember meeting Skelly-Byrnes and denied having any ties to the NBPP. He added that the disrespectful encounter Skelly-Byrnes described in the email “sounds out of character.” 

“Do we know how these folks are selected and screened?” Skelly-Byrnes wrote in her note to Lovello. “I know students in college experiment with ideologies but maybe we should screen better.”

On May 1, Birckhead-Morton was arrested again, charged with disorderly conduct and a second trespassing count after leading a nighttime rally outside the University President’s residence. That night, Halstead put him in handcuffs, officer narratives of the arrest confirm.

Two of the three other protesters arrested that night — neither affiliated with Yale — were detained forcefully. Video footage shows YPD officers tackling the individuals to the ground, and holding them there. Yale Public Safety commissioned an external review of the arrests, which a hired private law firm completed in August but never released publicly. A published summary of the review’s results concluded that one of the involved officers did not follow “best practices” when making the arrest.

Birckhead-Morton did not participate in the external investigation nor did he independently submit a civilian complaint, he told the News. He attributed both decisions to concern over his then-pending criminal charges.

“I think it’s important that not lawyers but administrators and faculty and students can really look at this themselves,” Birckhead-Morton said in a November interview. “This was an opportunity that was taken away from [the board] that they should have had, and that was put in the hands of some external lawyers. I think that truly is unfortunate.” 

YCC seeks action after campus arrests, proposes new Advisory Board

On Jan. 26, the Yale College Council passed a bill calling for increased YPD transparency and oversight. Inspired by communications obtained through a records request from the YPD, the writers of the proposal took issue with the department’s use of drone footage and ID card swipe tracking to monitor the spring’s pro-Palestinian protests, as well as the department’s communications with local employees at the Federal Bureau of Investigations.

Among the bill’s recommendations is a call to establish an “independent oversight board” of two undergraduate students, two graduate students and five faculty members — a similar makeup to that of the board dissolved over the summer. The new board proposed in the resolution would be tasked with “reviewing YPD surveillance practices, use of force policies, and collaborations with external agencies” and would publish an annual report on its findings. The proposal does not mention civilian complaint review responsibilities, but cites the University of California system’s police accountability boards, which do formulate recommendations on investigations into civilian complaints.

In an interview with the News after the bill was proposed, Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis said that the administration does have plans to revive such an Advisory Board, which would include student representation. Lewis acknowledged the existence of the previous board but could not provide a reason for its “lapse” in activity.

“What I’ve learned about university committees,” Lewis said, “is that a lot of them have very important roles to play, but they don’t always meet according to the assigned schedule. They’re very dependent on changes in personnel or changes in the membership. If students graduate, or a faculty goes on sabbatical, or something like that, the committee might stop meeting, and it might just get dropped by mistake.”

The Yale Police Department was founded in 1894.

Nora Moses and Karla Cortes contributed reporting.

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Yale offers some employees up to $1,000 to help cover child care-related expenses for work travel annually. However, if another parent remains at home, the reimbursement does not apply — even if the trip places an overwhelming burden on the remaining caregiver. Thompson ended up paying independently to bring one of her children to Malawi and have the other two taken care of in New Haven. 

“To have my kids looked after while I do my field work for Yale, it costs me out of pocket, thousands of dollars a year. And that’s just a fact. It’s just the way it is,” Thompson told the News. 

Child care subsidies, backup care services and affiliated daycare centers across New Haven are just a few of the resources for working parents advertised on Yale’s website. However, many parents report high costs, long waitlists, endless paperwork and logistical challenges that create significant gaps in the accessibility and affordability of child care. They say Yale’s offerings fall short, forcing them to independently navigate frustrating barriers to secure quality care.

A representative from the provost’s office told the News that the Yale WorkLife Center is the office overseeing child care support for Yale students, faculty and staff. In an email to the News, Angela Reese, the manager of the WorkLife center, wrote that the office “provides one-on-one consultations for parents to assist with finding child care,” but there are no plans for the expansion of affiliated child care centers. 

When approached repeatedly for an interview, Nina Stachenfeld, chair of the Women’s Faculty Forum, which advocates for gender equity on campus, declined to comment and wrote to the News that “we have not made progress and have nothing to report.” 

Some parents, like Valerie Horsley, a professor and mother of two, are frustrated that Yale’s efforts to address child care challenges remain limited. Horsley, herself a member of the Yale Faculty Senate, has repeatedly lobbied for child care reform but said she has not made substantial progress.

“I’m just not convinced that there’s a lot of forward movement that’s like being [made]. I don’t think this is the highest priority for the University,” Horsley said.

Other parents described a system that, while well-intentioned, has often left them feeling unsupported. Despite Yale’s subsidy offerings, the cost of child care in the New Haven area can reach up to $30,000 annually, making it a significant burden for many families, especially those with multiple children or single-income households. 

Parents said that the effectiveness of Yale’s programs is often undermined by high costs, limited flexibility and administrative hurdles. Many families feel that Yale’s offerings, though helpful on the surface, fail to recognize the realistic demands of raising children while working at the University.

High costs, long waitlists for Yale child care centers

Yale provides a range of programs to support its parents. Child Care Subsidy Program, established in July 2022, is designed to help faculty, managerial and professional staff, postdoctoral associates and postdoctoral fellows offset the cost of child care by adding a child care stipend to their paycheck. 

The subsidy is tiered based on household income. Families earning under $115,999 can receive up to $4,000 annually, while those earning between $116,000 and $159,999 qualify for $3,000 and those earning between $160,000 and $200,000 receive $2,000.

Only one subsidy is allowed per household, regardless of the number of children under five. Yale does not offer any financial support for expenses for children ages six and up. 

“Does the university think kids between, say, five and thirteen can look after themselves while their parents work all day?” Thompson, whose children range from four to sixteen years old, asked. 

The University also partners with seven local daycare centers in the area to provide high-quality, on-site options for parents. These Yale-affiliated centers offer care for infants starting at just a few months old through children about to enter kindergarten and either prioritize Yale affiliates or are exclusively for Yale families. 

Despite Yale’s efforts to support working parents, the high costs of University-affiliated child care centers often put them out of reach for many families. Monthly tuition ranges from $2,000 to $3,000, which adds up to anywhere from $18,000 to $27,000 annually, a steep price for the average person working in academia. 

For assistant professors, who earn around $125,000 per year, child care costs can consume between 14 and 22 percent of their salary. For postdoctoral researchers, who earn approximately $68,000 annually, that figure reaches up to 26 to 40 percent. 

Many, like Thompson, frequently opt for more affordable alternatives farther from campus.

Victoria Bertacchi GRD ’25 and Alex Bertacchi GRD ’24, a doctoral student and postdoctoral fellow, respectively, welcomed their first child in August 2023 but also do not use Yale child care centers.

“For professors, it’s probably okay, but for grad students, it is almost unattainable,” Victoria said of the cost. 

“Realistically, not even professors sometimes can afford that. So it’s really just for a small privileged group,” Alex added. 

He wished that the University would make child care options part of employee benefits instead of providing a child care subsidy. 

Thompson said another reason her family decided against a Yale-affiliated center was that its waitlists were “impossible to navigate.”

“You have to get on them when they’re not yet born,” she said. 

Child care access has been a long-standing issue at Yale. 

Upon her arrival at Yale in 2009, Horsley began advocating for more on-campus child care options. Due to the lengthy process, she had her first child on multiple waitlists for facilities in the area before even starting her job at Yale. 

With support from the Office of the Provost, Horsley proposed the establishment of a child care center in an empty space in the Yale Divinity School, leading to the opening of The Nest at Alphabet Academy in 2013. The Nest, a three-classroom facility with few spots, is the most recently established Yale-affiliated center. Horsley described the ongoing push for more child care as “a constant battle.” 

Reese, the manager of the WorkLife center, wrote that the office has no current plans to expand on-campus child care.

Backup Care: A Solution Parents Struggle to Trust

Yale offers subsidized backup child care through Bright Horizons for up to 10 days a year. This service helps parents manage emergencies when regular child care falls through, providing options for in-home care or care at designated centers. 

The subsidized cost of in-home backup care is $6 per hour, and for center-based backup care, the price ranges from $25-$30 per day. However, many parents hesitate to use backup care due to concerns about leaving their children with unfamiliar caregivers.

“Children don’t really feel comfortable around people they don’t know very well,” Horsley said.

Andrea Aldrich, Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Political Science Department and a parent of a 3-year-old, echoed these concerns. 

“These are people that my son has never met, so if there’s a crisis with child care, my first inclination is not going to be, oh let’s set up backup care,” Aldrich said.

The cost of research

Yale’s policies include travel-related benefits, such as up to $1,000 annually to help faculty cover the cost of bringing their children, family and caregivers to conferences or short-term research destinations. Costs eligible for reimbursement are listed on the Child Care Support for Professional Travel webpage. For parents still nursing at the time of travel, Yale also reimburses the costs of shipping breastmilk home to their infants. 

For parents with demanding academic schedules — especially those, like Thompson, in research-heavy roles that require travel for fieldwork — finding flexible and reliable child care can feel nearly impossible.

“If I have to bring one of my children to my fieldwork with me in Central Africa,” Thompson said. “That costs $2,500 for one child. And if my parents travel to look after them, they’re not getting any money to subsidize that, to come here from across the country to do that, and that’s not enough money to cover the cost.” 

Thompson’s experience is shared by many other Yale parents. Part of the financial strain comes from Yale’s extensive and specific requirements for which travel expenses are considered reimbursable, parents said. 

For example, the program does not cover travel costs for children if a co-parent or guardian stays at home. 

Victoria Bertacchi brought her child to Samoa to finish up her fieldwork, an expense that wasn’t considered a necessity because her husband had stayed at home. Still breastfeeding and wanting, as a new mother, to stay close to her son, she chose to pay herself to bring him along.

“Paying out of pocket because you need your newborn to come with you sucks,” she said. “He was eight months old, so it’s either I don’t go, or he comes with me, right?”

Drowning in paperwork: ‘We just gave up’

In addition to often falling short of the realistic costs of child care, Yale subsidies come with an added cost of time and frustration, parents noted. 

Navigating the reimbursement process often involves a maze of detailed forms, invoice requirements and back-and-forth communications, leaving parents overwhelmed by red tape.

“The documentation that you need in order to claim the subsidy is a little bit taxing honestly,” Thompson told the News. “My husband submits it on behalf of our family, and every time it gets returned to us for some detail that’s not on the invoice.” 

Providers must supply highly specific documentation, including itemized care dates and tax identification numbers, often formatted differently from one provider to another. Thompson said that she frequently had to follow up with her provider in Guilford to ensure the receipts met Yale’s requirements. 

Moreover, informal child care arrangements for short-term care often do not qualify for Yale’s subsidy program due to strict documentation requirements, Thompson said. To be eligible for reimbursement, families’ independent caregivers must provide detailed information, including their Social Security number, a log of all payments and dates and their address, which casual babysitters, such as college students, may be unwilling to share. 

Aldrich recalled instances where she covered expenses herself to avoid extensive paperwork. 

“My spouse and I both went to a conference a couple summers ago when our child was one. So we took him with us, and we brought my mother-in-law, and we tried to get her plane ticket reimbursed,” Aldrich said. “The amount of paperwork that they required of us to be able to do that was so insane that we just gave up.” 

After the stress of this experience, Aldrich has not tried to get other travel expenses reimbursed.

When asked about potential plans to simplify the reimbursement process, Reese wrote that the WorkLife Office “works with the program vendor to identify ways to further streamline the subsidy application process” but did not elaborate on specific details. 

For now, parents continue navigating the complex system of forms and administrative barriers, often spending additional time and energy just to access the benefits. 

Gender inequity in child care: ‘It’s just kind of the world that we live in’

A 2022 article co-authored by Thompson points to the deeper implications of child care inaccessibility. The pressures of balancing work and caregiving often fall more heavily on women than men, she wrote. 

Biological factors, such as pregnancy and breastfeeding, compound the already significant social expectations placed on mothers, creating further imbalances in professional opportunities, the paper states. 

“All of these burdens can lead to an imbalance in the opportunities women have to become leaders in their arena,” Thompson wrote. 

The challenges of getting child care at Yale reflect broader societal issues that disproportionately impact women, Thompson said. 

Studies have consistently shown that women bear the brunt of care work, even in two-parent working households, and that this imbalance is only exacerbated by inadequate child care systems. As Thomspon sees it, addressing these gaps is not just a matter of convenience but a question of equity and inclusion in academia.

“As your kid starts daycare, it’s like, everyone suffers, everyone is poor, everyone is sicker, everybody is lonelier,” Thompson said.

“It’s just kind of the world that we live in, and there are some things that you just can’t really change,” she added. “You know, if you want to be able to do certain kinds of jobs, you just have to have child care like that.”

The post High costs, extensive waitlists, endless paperwork: The reality of being a working parent at Yale appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Under Leo’s guidance in 2018, Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh ’87 LAW ’90, who has been connected with the Federalist Society for at least 24 years. In 2017 and 2020, Leo’s creation of a list of potential Supreme Court nominees for Trump helped to advise the appointment of two other Federalist Society affiliates, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett.

By 2024, six of the nine Supreme Court justices considered themselves members or affiliates of the Federalist Society — the culmination of a longstanding pipeline connecting members of Federalist Society chapters at America’s top law schools to high-level judgeships and political offices.

But how exactly does this pipeline work, and how has it shaped conservative thought within the American judiciary?

The Federalist Society, a debating organization that hosts political events and acts as a network for conservative and libertarian students and professionals, was founded at Yale Law School in 1982 by three Yale alumni: Steven Calabresi ’80 LAW ’83, David McIntosh ’80 and Lee Liberman Otis ’79. Today, the Society is represented at all 204 ABA-accredited law schools in the country, has established communities of affiliated lawyers in 60 cities and has over 70,000 members.

​​The organization is divided into three divisions — students’ division, lawyers’ division and faculty division — allowing for collaboration between law students, practicing lawyers and judges and law school professors. 

From humble beginnings to political heights

In April 1982, the Federalist Society held its first event: a referendum entitled “A Symposium on Federalism: Legal and Political Ramifications.” Held over the course of a weekend, it featured a series of speaker events, debates and workshops. 

The Federalist Society has since defined itself as a “group of conservatives and libertarians interested in the current state of the legal order,” according to its website. According to its three founders, the Federalist Society’s original goal was to provide a space on law school campuses for debating ideas across the political spectrum.

“It’s fair to say that none of us, when we started it, had any idea how large it would eventually grow to be,” Calabresi said.

With six of the nine current Supreme Court justices serving as members or affiliates of the Federalist Society — Clarence Thomas LAW ’74, Samuel Alito LAW ’75, John Roberts, Kavanaugh, Barrett and Gorsuch — the group’s impact on the national judiciary is notably more significant than its founders anticipated.

Other affiliates include former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray ’89 LAW ’92, former U.S. Attorneys General Edwin Meese ’53 and John Ashcroft ’64 and senator Josh Hawley LAW ’06. 

An “affiliate relationship” to the society is defined by membership in one of its divisions, regular attendance at events or speaking at events.

The idea for the Federalist Society originated when Calabresi, McIntosh and Liberman Otis, all Yale College graduates, started their legal studies — Calabresi at Yale Law School and McIntosh and Liberman at the University of Chicago Law School. They felt that libertarian and conservative perspectives on issues were not represented on their campuses. 

All former members of the Yale Political Union in 1978 and 1979, they noted the “debate and discussion” that fueled their time in the YPU was not present at their respective law schools.

“The Political Union, at the time we were active in it, … was very different from what it is now,” Calabresi said. “We really believed in the value of debate and discussion that the Yale Political Union fostered and wanted to bring it to our law school campuses.”

The three began reaching out to prominent professors and thinkers on the political right to organize their first event: a “Symposium on Federalism” hosted on Yale’s campus. They managed to secure a speaker lineup that included Robert Bork, a candidate for a Supreme Court nomination during Ronald Reagan’s presidency; Scalia, who was a high-level UChicago Law School professor at the time; and Morton Blackwell, president of the Leadership Institute, an organization committed to “turn[ing] principled conservatives into powerhouse leaders,” according to the organization’s website. 

A funding sum of $24,000 from the John M. Olin Foundation and the Institute for Educational Affairs — an organization run by Irving Kristol, a prominent neo-conservative thinker — allowed the Federalist Society to pay for the travel expenses of 60 students and 20 legal scholars to the symposium, which was co-sponsored by the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy.

On April 23, 1982, the News published an article announcing the symposium, which was to be held on the last weekend of April. “Several hundred law students are expected to attend a conference on ‘Federalism: Legal and Political Ramifications’ this weekend,” the News wrote. “The symposium, including speeches, debates, and discussions, will provide students and the speakers with a forum for discussing the proper balance of power among federal, state, and local governments.”

Topics covered at the first symposium included originalism — a philosophy of constitutional interpretation that believes in reading the law as it would have been understood at its birth — and best practices for high-level success for right-wing students.

Blackwell shared reflections on how to get “better people” on law school faculties and how to reshape cultures on law school campuses, according to records by the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. Bork spoke about political issues, including abortion and the “gentrification of the Constitution.” 

At the symposium, Scalia said that “conservatives had been outgunned at the federal level for half a century.” 

On May 2, 1982, the event was featured in The New York Times — an instance of high-profile coverage that foreshadowed the Federalist Society’s subsequent momentum and a new era of conservative thought on law school campuses, one defined by concentrated and organized representation, events and programming. 

Within two years of its first referendum, the Federalist Society had officially filed for national nonprofit status and was operating on dozens of new elite law school campuses, including Harvard, Georgetown University, the University of Virginia and Stanford University. It hosted another symposium in 1983 at Harvard Law School and a third in 1984 at the University of Chicago. By the 1990s, the Federalist Society operated a branch at every law school in the country. 

A pipeline from law school to the courts

As original members began graduating from their respective law schools and entering the national court system, they maintained their ties to the Federalist Society. 

The development of the Lawyers’ Division of the organization in 1986 ensured that graduates could still maintain their intellectual ties to the society through organized speaker events and annual conventions. The creation of a Faculty Division in 1999 allowed law school professors to take an invested stake in “encourag[ing] constructive academic discourse,” according to the Federalist Society’s website.

This led to a high-powered pipeline to the national court system facilitated by the Federalist Society’s vast alumni and affiliate network. 

Noah Feldman, a law professor at Harvard, participated in a number of Federalist Society events as an “arguer on the other side” of the society’s stated political affiliations, he said. A self-identified “liberally-inclined” thinker and debater, Feldman authored the audiobook “Takeover: How a Conservative Student Club Captured the Supreme Court” in 2021 alongside co-author Lidia Jean Kott, wherein they unpack the Federalist Society’s “pipeline” to high-level national politics.

Feldman told the News that the Federalist Society’s community of thinkers with similar intellectual, political and legal commitments enables members to support one another over the course of their careers. 

“It basically creates a framework in which there can be a clear path to go from smart, first-year law student with conservative leanings to law clerk to a Court of Appeals judge or to the Supreme Court,” Feldman said.

High-powered connections like those between the society and national judiciary politics abounded over the course of the society’s early years. During Ronald Reagan’s presidency, Attorney General Edwin Meese was known to give key positions in the Justice Department to members of the society, helping to ensure that judicial nominees were “compatible with the philosophical and policy orientation of the President,” according to an article published by the Federalist Society Review. 

During the presidency of George H.W. Bush ’48, Otis, co-founder of the society, was selected as an associate White House counsel. The role of a White House counsel is to advise the president on all legal issues concerning the president and their administration, including judicial candidates, according to the Federal Register.

“Organizations and institutions, if they’re small enough and have a sense of community, are very good at creating a sense of reputation and of mutual trust,” Feldman said.

Calabresi echoed Feldman’s sentiments.

“The Federalist Society has kind of grown into an extended family, and so it’s a bit of a network of sorts,” Calabresi said. 

He explained that he believes that people with right-of-center political views often feel isolated and marginalized at Yale Law School. According to Calabresi, the society allows people to form friendships with “other people who agree with them.” Additionally, he explained that the society puts students in touch with judges who share similar views, whom students can then “go on to clerk for.” 

This relationship, according to Calabresi, has reciprocally shaped judges’ vetting processes for potential clerks.

“Judges and thinkers who are right of center often find that they’re in a minority in the courts that they’re on, and they equally draw sustenance from being part of a group that is a national group of people who think the way that most Federalist Society members do,” Calabresi said.

Despite this unforeseen pipeline of power, Calabresi emphasized that the Federalist Society’s day-to-day operations still echo its original goal of fostering debate on college campuses.

He pointed to an event hosted by the Federalist Society at Yale Law School on Sept. 24, 2024, titled “Where Have All the Trials Gone? The Vanishing Jury Trial and What It Means for the Legal Profession and the American System of Justice,” which saw Judge Richard Sullivan LAW ’90 of the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals speak on the future of jury trials in America.

“The Federalist Society contributes vitally to the intellectual life of this place,” Sullivan said at the event. “I’d like to thank them for having me today and for supplementing law school students’ educations.”

Calabresi reflected on the Federalist Society’s importance on campuses, one that he sees as more powerful than the society’s operations in the legal world.

“We are, at our core, a society for debating ideas,” Calabresi said. “I just think it’s informational, both for Federalist Society members and for non-Federalist Society members to come and hear what our speakers, like Judge Sullivan, have to say on law school campuses.”

On a larger scale, the high-powered network facilitated by the society continued to manifest on the national stage. Under former President George W. Bush’s ’68 administration, two new justices with Federalist Society ties — Alito and Roberts — were appointed to the nation’s Supreme Court. Joining Thomas, a Reagan appointee, their appointments ensured that one-third of America’s highest court had ties to the Federalist Society. 

Building ties to the Supreme Court

Eleven years later, in 2017, President Donald Trump began the review process for a successor for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. During the judiciary vetting process, his administration worked closely with Leonard Leo, former executive vice-president of the Federalist Society and current co-chairman, to evaluate potential candidates.

Leo — a Cornell Law School graduate who founded Cornell’s Federalist Society chapter in 1986 — stepped down from his role as co-president of the society in 2017, when the Trump administration had just begun its review process for potential new Supreme Court justices. During this time, Leo devised a list of potential candidate names for the former president that proved to include the three justices Trump would ultimately appoint during his presidency.

As a confidant to Trump, Leo played a considerable role in the 2017 appointment of Neil Gorsuch. Trump’s later appointments of Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, also Federalist Society affiliates, were under Leo’s counseling, as well. This aligned with a promise that Trump had made earlier in 2016 during his election campaign: if elected, his judicial nominees would “all [be] picked by the Federalist Society.” 

Over the course of the past 40 years, Leo has played a significant role in accelerating the Federalist Society’s rapid growth on the national stage.

After graduating from Cornell, Leo moved to Washington to take on a full-time job with the Federalist Society. He focused on identifying sources of funding for the organization, developing relationships with donors such as the Koch Family Foundation and the Scaife Foundation. As Leo’s personal career developed, he kickstarted The 85 Fund, a group that funds conservative causes nationwide. The 85 Fund donated $5.6 million in funds to the Federalist Society in 2020 and $3.5 million in 2021.

Leo quickly rose within the ranks of the society, becoming vice president of operations in 1990. He took leaves of absence from this position during the judicial review processes for Bush’s Supreme Court nominations in the early 2000s, and he stepped down from his role as operational vice president to become honorary co-chairman of the organization during Trump’s judicial review processes for the Supreme Court.

“When you see that Leonard Leo … took a leave from the Federalist Society to actually go work in the Trump administration on judicial appointments, it just couldn’t be more explicit that there’s a strong tie between the society and our national judiciary,” Feldman said.

Leo, a self-identified conservative who has closely aligned himself with the Christian right, sees his ties with the Federalist Society as a means to realign national politics. 

Leo did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

After receiving $1.6 billion in donations from 2020 to 2022 from Barre Seid, who is a Federalist Society affiliate and political donor, Leo has outlined a plan for a conservative takeover of the courts.

“We need to crush liberal dominance where it’s most insidious,” Leo told the Financial Times.

In Feldman’s opinion, Leo’s connections with the White House and national judiciary processes since his start at the Federalist Society are proof of the society’s strong influence on the national stage.

Calabresi clarified that despite this perceived link, the goals of the organization remain focused on hosting debates and holding conversations that feature different viewpoints.

“The Federalist Society plays no role in judicial selection under either Republican or Democratic Administrations,” Calabresi wrote to the News. “We are a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, which holds debates and conferences in which all points of view are presented as much as is possible.”

Feldman, though, described the past 20 years under Leo’s leadership at the Federalist Society as a “conservative constitutional revolution.”

Politicians like Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse ’78, United States senator for Rhode Island since 2007 and chairman of the Senate’s Judiciary Subcommittee on Federal Courts, see Leo’s political influence as setting a dangerous precedent.

In a statement to the News, Whitehouse, who has been outspoken in his criticisms of the Federalist Society pipeline, critiqued Leo’s contributions to national judiciary politics.

“Leonard Leo’s secretive judicial selection and confirmation operation use[s] the Federalist Society’s name as a cover,” Whitehouse wrote to the News. 

He described Leo’s influence as an advisor to President Trump as a “covert operation … to control Republican judicial appointments.” 

Whitehouse claimed that the Federalist Society is a “pawn” in what he perceives to be Leo’s efforts to expand conservative influence over the national court system. In Whitehouse’s opinion, Leo’s actions do not align with the stated goals or values of the national Federalist Society as it operates today. 

Calabresi specified that the role of independent actors like Leo in judicial processes did not reflect the stances or positions of the society at large. 

“Contrary to the press reports, the Federalist Society plays no role at all in judicial nominations and never has,” Calabresi wrote to the News.

He said that while individual members of the society’s board of directors have sometimes played a role in judicial decisions, this has been in a strictly private capacity. 

What does this mean for the 2024 election?

Noah Feldman drew a connection between the 2024 election and the future influence of the Federalist Society.

Feldman said he believes the Federalist Society perceives conservatism as being an “underdog” in national politics. This perception, he said, is subject to change depending on the outcome of the 2024 election. 

Given Trump’s strong connection to the Society, Feldman said that a Trump victory would challenge the society’s position as an “underdog” in national politics, draining energy from the movement in the long-term. 

When asked about how the society might operate differently in an election year, Calabresi clarified that the Federalist Society intends to be strictly apolitical.

“The Federalist Society … takes no positions on pending legislation, cases pending before the Supreme Court or any other court, or on judicial nominations,” Calabresi wrote to the News.

Irrespective of the Federalist Society’s intentions, Feldman discussed the organization’s wide-ranging — but perhaps, inadvertent — impact on national politics. Feldman said he sees the past five years as the “apex” of the Federalist Society’s influence, with the 2024 election representing an essential turning point.

He pointed to splinterings within the national court system that exemplify this decline.

“Once you’ve gotten your main objectives, it is much harder to hold on to your place of influence,” Feldman said. “Right now, the conservative justices are starting to splinter in terms of their jurisprudential and ideological commitments, and you can see that in the court’s opinions.”

In the past, the Federalist Society was committed to the three elements of modern legal conservatism: textualism in statutory interpretation, originalism in constitutional interpretation and judicial restraint. According to Calabresi, while the society is committed to hosting debates featuring multiple perspectives, members “tend to agree on how to interpret the law.” 

Feldman echoed this idea. “If there’s any other group that wants to achieve similar influence to the Federalist Society, it similarly has to have cohesion in its ideological commitments and the long time horizon and the patience to get there,” Feldman said. 

However, Feldman sees this shared interpretation as being at risk. He cited examples of how justices associated with the society, like Alito and Gorsuch, have begun to deviate from textualism, contrary to the society’s stated goals. 

In Feldman’s opinion, this loss of a cohesive legal stance and philosophy, coupled with the rapid growth of conservatism in national judiciary politics in the last 10 years, could foreshadow the Federalist Society’s downfall.

According to Feldman, should Trump win the 2024 election, Trump’s close ties to the Federalist Society’s network would ensure that any judge appointments within the next four years are members of the tight-knit society. 

Two judges — Thomas, 72, and Alito, 74 — are approaching the age of retirement, and politicians expect a Supreme Court vacancy to open during the upcoming 60th presidency.

Alongside the presidential election, 305 appellate court seats are on the ballot in 2024, including 69 state supreme court seats this November. 32 of the candidates running for state supreme court positions are affiliated with the Federalist Society.

Feldman’s notion of the society’s “apex” cannot be disentangled from the organization’s long history of judicial impact. 

As the 2024 election approaches, the Federalist Society provides a new lens by which to view the growth of conservatism as a concentrated body of thought on the national scale. 

This April will mark the 43rd year since the Federalist Society’s founding.

The post How the Federalist Society shaped America’s judiciary appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Just over a decade before his vice presidential candidacy, Vance graduated from Yale Law School. There, he was well-liked among students across the political spectrum and wanted to be a “moderating influence,” his classmates recalled. As a student, Vance facilitated a reading group, sent spirited emails to his classmates, adventured on road trips and hikes, and met his future wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance ’07 LAW ’13.

Though the roommates did not become close friends, McLaurin said he respected Vance’s intellectual rigor and open-minded curiosity.

“I really believed that he had the potential to reshape conservative politics,” McLaurin told the News. “He was not just parroting Republican Party talking points. He was really his own thinker, and he had modesty about his own thoughts.”

Since graduating, the Vances have separated themselves from the institution and skipped reunions, according to a classmate who took a seminar with JD Vance, who will be referred to as H. for clarity. In a speech titled “The Universities are the Enemy” at the 2021 National Conservatism Conference, Vance mentioned his stint at Yale to a chorus of boos from his audience. He bemoaned the institution’s “liberal bias” and decried it as “totalitarian.” 

Former classmates say Vance’s views have changed since he left Yale. They disagree on whether this change of opinion was genuine and productive or a recalibration to the “winning team.” 

The News talked with YLS professors and Vance’s former classmates about his time at Yale. Three classmates to whom the News spoke requested anonymity to speak freely due to employment concerns.

Vance’s press team did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

An outsider in an insider institution

Vance grew up in a poor household in Appalachia, an origin story that serves as the thesis of his 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.” In the book, Vance outlines his turbulent childhood, his time serving in the Marines and his G.I. bill-sponsored education at Ohio State University.

Eventually, he made his way to New Haven where he studied for three years at Yale Law School. 

“Yale Law is a very conservative institution in the sense that it’s very protective of its place as a kind of breeding ground for the world’s leaders,” said Robert Cobbs LAW ’13. “It values that reputation more than it cares whether those leaders are any good.”

In “Hillbilly Elegy,” he writes of the institution with awe, describing it as a “nerd Hollywood” of towering neo-Gothic architecture. Vance recalls feeling like a perpetual outsider at Yale, largely because of his rural working-class background.

“Maybe, with my Southern drawl and lack of a family pedigree, I felt like I needed proof that I belonged at Yale,” he writes in his book.

Alumni who studied alongside Vance also noted the institution’s emphasis on status and prestige. Ryan Thoreson LAW ’14 said that at that time, Yale Law School felt “more insular.”

Classes at the Law School were not particularly competitive due to forgiving grading systems and an emphasis on small-group collaboration, several alumni said. These priorities, however, underlined the pressure to distinguish oneself outside the classroom through networking.

In “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance writes that his background made him feel particularly ostracized in these non-classroom spaces at Yale. For example, Vance describes in one scene a “nine utensil” recruiting dinner.

The 2013-14 Yale Law School Bulletin wrote that approximately three-quarters of the student body received some sort of financial assistance.

“My experience was that almost everybody’s got something to make them feel less than confident,” said Lea Brilmayer, a professor emeritus of law who taught a first-year contract class at the law school. “There’s one in a million that just aces everything, but nobody really feels like they ace everything. Everybody’s insecure.”

However, according to Charles Tyler LAW ’13, many students at Yale Law School hailed from wealthy families, often with distinguished parents, which explains what Tyler calls the cultural “dislocation” Vance described in the book. The law school experience “heavily [depended] on insider information and networks,” and students who went to elite undergraduate institutions “had a distinction very early on,” Tyler added. 

McLaurin believes that Yale Law School, whether accidentally or intentionally, might exacerbate the perceived outsiderness of people who already feel excluded.

In “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance recalls a story in which a professor said that students not from schools such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Princeton require “remedial education” and should not be accepted to the law school.

According to McLaurin, it was Paul Kahn, a professor of law and the humanities at Yale Law School, whom Vance referenced in the anecdote. Kahn wrote to the News that “JD Vance, at one point in his first term, did believe these were my views, and he was quite upset about it.” 

However, Kahn wrote that he actually does not believe this, which he explained to Vance, and the two eventually had a good relationship. Vance became Kahn’s teaching assistant and house sitter. 

“I don’t think he would have done this had he continued to think these were my views,” Kahn wrote.

Vance also writes of the Yale Law Journal, the school’s prestigious student-run law review, with the same sense of mythology that he attributes to the institution itself. Like in other non-curricular spaces at Yale, Vance felt he lacked the insider knowledge of many of his classmates. 

“The entire process was a black box,” Vance wrote. “And no one I knew had the key.”

Alumni explained that admission into the journal entailed a rigorous bluebook exam as well as a short essay component, necessitating the study of a universal legal citation system. Students could also be admitted by writing for the journal.

But Robert Cobbs LAW ’13 mentioned that, while the journal was a “presumptive criterion for a chunk of prestigious clerkships,” not everyone was interested in participating. 

“It’s as mythic as you let it be. Nobody has to go on the Yale Law Journal to get a job,” Professor Brilmayer echoed.

In the October 2012 edition of the journal, Vance was one of around 60 editors, a non-leadership role that required checking citations. His future wife, on the other hand, was the executive developmental editor of the same volume. H. described her as “Ms. YLJ.”

“A kind, unassuming friend” and Usha’s “smitten” boyfriend

Vance was a law student who “wanted to be a kind of moderating influence, or a translator, between the angry, crazy side of the Republican party and everyone else,” according to a second former law school classmate.

He befriended classmates with a broad range of political outlooks. James Eimers LAW ’14, who met him at an admitted students program prior to law school, wrote to the News that Vance “genuinely cares about the people around him.” 

Eimers wrote that he knew JD Vance as “a kind, unassuming friend who had no trouble bridging seemingly disparate social groups.”

“During his own search for summer work, he came across a clerkship opportunity on the Senate Judiciary Committee,” Eimers wrote. “Despite the very limited number of positions available, he didn’t hesitate to send it my way and give me his thoughts on the application process, lowering his own chances of acceptance to the program as a result.”

Ultimately, Eimers said that the two both received offers and worked together that summer.

Vance frequently used the Wall, an email list server that blasted messages to the Yale Law School community. He would offer to sell Usha Vance’s Megabus tickets, ask if anyone would lend a law book for an exam, complain about the IRS or request a puppy sitter.

At Yale, Vance was “quite smitten” with his then-girlfriend, Usha Chilukuri, Tyler said. The Vances married a year after graduating from law school.

Usha Vance studied history at Yale as an undergraduate, was a Yale-China fellow and earned a Gates-Cambridge fellowship before returning to Yale for her law degree. 

In 2006, Yale’s tabloid magazine Rumpus featured Usha Vance in their annual “Most Beautiful People” edition, writing that “most of her liaisons have been tall, handsome, and conservative (though she herself is of the left-ish political persuasion).”

H., who mentioned the Vances’ distancing from the institution, said that though Usha Vance identified as a liberal, she was willing to clerk for a conservative judge for reasons of career advancement — something not many of her peers were willing to do, and something that set her apart for success, he said. She clerked for several judges after law school, including Justice Brett Kavanaugh ’87 LAW ’90.

H. wrote that JD and Usha were “joined at the hip.” Tyler said the two spent much of their time together and mentioned that during long weekends, he would join them to visit local farms or go hiking. In “Hillbilly Elegy,” JD Vance calls Usha Vance his “Yale spirit guide.”

Recalibrating political views

While classmates’ opinions on Vance’s character differed, many agreed that he has politically changed since his time at Yale. 

Vance’s political orientation was no secret, Tyler said.

Vance facilitated a reading group on social decline in white America. According to an email obtained by the News, the syllabus included books and articles like Allen Batteau’s “The Invention of Appalachia” and “About Men: Whites Without Money” — a theme that arises in much of Vance’s writing and political platform.

Since graduating, Vance has worked in corporate law and venture capital. Throughout his early public appearances, he was a vocal Trump critic, and even called himself a “Never Trump guy” in a 2016 interview with Charlie Rose. 

McLaurin and Vance fell out of touch after their time as roommates. But, looking for an opinion from a conservative whom he respected, McLaurin contacted Vance in 2016 to ask about his perspective on Trump, then a presidential candidate.

McLaurin said that he reached out because Vance was “a genuinely curious person, and other than cynical, sarcastic humor about the school that featured in a lot of group hangouts, he was a good roommate.”

H., who took Kavanaugh’s National Security and Foreign Relations seminar with JD Vance, said that running for office has been something that the Vances have “had in the works” since their time at the law school.

During his campaign for Ohio Senator in 2022, Vance courted and won Trump’s endorsement. 

Ahead of Vance’s run for Senate, in which Trump’s endorsement helped him secure the Republican nomination, McLaurin revealed messages from that exchange, in which Vance wrote that he goes “back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler.”

One of Vance’s close friends from Yale described his shift towards Trump as a productive change of opinion, saying that he was “proven wrong” about Trump. “If you don’t change views as you learn things, you’re a pretty shitty candidate,” he said, maintaining that Vance has always been “for the little guy.”

McLaurin, however, said that “maybe you could understand his criticisms of Trump as an audition to be one of the foremost voices condemning Trump.” Once Trump won, McLaurin said, “Obviously he had been on the wrong horse, and he needed to completely recalibrate so he could be on whatever the winning team was.”

McLaurin called Vance cynical. Vance has condemned the smugness of “elites,” McLaurin said, yet he has profited enormously from connections forged at Yale, including with billionaire Peter Thiel, whom he met at the event at the law school. Vance later wrote that Thiel’s talk was “the most significant moment” of his time at Yale. 

Tyler, on the other hand, views Vance’s shift as part of a broader contextual shift. “One thing that’s hard to disentangle is that the Republican Party itself is so radically different today than it was back then,” Tyler said.

“He was always a conservative,” Tyler told the News. “That was always quite clear. But what conservatism meant for him then, and what it means for him now, I think has changed.”

If elected, Vance would be the fourth U.S. vice president who graduated from Yale. 

Correction, Oct. 29: This article was updated to clarify that “dislocation” was used describe Vance’s book, but not in the book itself. 

The post Before he was Trump’s running mate, JD Vance was a free thinker and “moderating influence” at Yale Law School appeared first on Yale Daily News.

SHARE is available to all members of the Yale community who are dealing with sexual misconduct of any kind, including sexual assault, sexual harassment, stalking, intimate partner violence and more. Counselors are available any time, day or night, at the 24/7 hotline: (203) 432-2000. 

Robert Sullivan, former senior director for residential dining at Yale Hospitality, was the subject of at least two complaints to the Yale Office of Institutional Equity and Accessibility, or OIEA, the University body that responds to reports of harassment, an investigation by the News reveals. Additionally, based on interviews with 15 current and former Hospitality employees, Sullivan’s routine workplace conduct — including hugging, heavy touching, extended shoulder rubs and cheek kisses — may have been in violation of Yale’s Sexual Misconduct Policies. 

In July 2019, after former dining hall worker Vanesa Suarez reported Sullivan for sexual harassment, the OIEA dismissed the allegation without ever meeting with her. In May 2023, after a former dining hall manager reported Sullivan for initiating nonconsensual “physical and sexual contact,” the OIEA began a formal investigation which concluded that Sullivan’s behavior was “‘severe’ under a reasonable person standard” and in violation of Yale’s Sexual Misconduct Policies. The News has obtained OIEA documentation related to both cases. In September 2023, following the OIEA’s finding, Yale Hospitality announced that Sullivan would be retiring, effective Jan. 1, 2024. But Sullivan remained in Yale’s employment software as a “Consultant” until at least Sept. 19 of this year. 

When presented with the contents of this story, Sullivan wrote in a text to the News, “Most of the information that you have provided above is inaccurate and defamatory.” Sullivan asserted that he worked “in a consulting capacity from September through December” and retired on Jan. 1, 2024. Sullivan viewed but did not respond to two follow-ups asking if he had received compensation from Yale in 2024 and two follow-ups asking him to specify his factual disputes with the allegations of misconduct presented in this story. 

When presented with the contents of this story, a University spokesperson confirmed on Oct. 20, 2024, that Sullivan was no longer employed by the University. The spokesperson did not specify the date that Sullivan left Yale. The spokesperson declined to comment on the specifics of Sullivan’s conduct and departure. The spokesperson also noted that Yale does not “comment on or even confirm the existence of specific complaints,” to maintain the confidentiality of the OIEA’s process.

Sullivan began his career at Yale in 1989 as a dining hall manager. In 2005, he was promoted and took on a series of senior leadership roles, most recently as senior director of residential dining from 2021 until his departure in 2023. In that role, he oversaw operations in all 14 residential college dining halls and reported to Yale Hospitality’s top executive, Associate Vice President Rafi Taherian.

Over the past nine months, the News has obtained relevant documents and interviewed 31 sources, including current and former workers and managers at Yale Hospitality, residential college administrators and heads of college. Almost all interviewees requested anonymity for fear of professional retribution, including several former Hospitality employees who are still employed in other Yale departments. The News has assigned some anonymous sources a random initial for the sake of clarity. 

“None of it was secret”

Fifteen current and former Hospitality employees described either receiving or witnessing hugging, heavy touching, extended shoulder rubs and cheek kisses from Sullivan during supervisory visits to dining halls and other workplaces, which occurred about once a month. According to these employees, this conduct began as early as 2014, when Sullivan served as director of residential operations. One worker said they witnessed these behaviors as early as 2005. According to all 15 employees, Sullivan exhibited this behavior openly and consistently until his departure. The News has not confirmed if this conduct was the subject of complaints to the OIEA. 

If workers felt that this behavior created a hostile environment, or that objecting to this behavior would affect their job standing, then Sullivan would be in violation of Yale’s Sexual Misconduct Policies. 

One former worker, A., said that co-workers would express disgust after interactions with Sullivan, describing him as “creepy” and “horny,” and asking each other, “Why is he hugging on me like that?” 

“[Sullivan’s conduct] was a conversation that multiple employees had in multiple different buildings,” said A., who worked in both catering and residential dining. “In every building I’ve ever been in, I’ve probably had that conversation with someone … this is a known thing around campus.” 

Twelve employees described a power gap between themselves and Hospitality leadership. Nine employees told the News they felt that reporting Sullivan would not have stopped his conduct. Four employees told the News they felt that reporting Sullivan would put their job in jeopardy. 

Not all workers were made uncomfortable by Sullivan’s conduct. “That’s just uncle Bob,” said one worker who has been with Hospitality for more than two decades. “That’s just how he’s always been.” 

But many characterized Sullivan’s conduct as sexual in nature. “I witnessed inappropriate behavior from day one,” said L., a former Hospitality manager. And, L. added, “None of it was secret.”

“There was no repercussions for anything,” A. said. “It seemed like everyone knew but no one did or said anything about it.”

Report of harassment dismissed by OIEA

Vanesa Suarez began working at Hospitality in January 2015 as a part-time banquet server. She was 19 years old and a student at Central Connecticut State University. At the time Sullivan was director of catering, overseeing Suarez’s department. Suarez believed that a friendship with Sullivan could help her professionally. When she traveled to Peru in December 2o15, she brought back a souvenir for Sullivan, a peach-colored tie. 

In August 2016, Suarez joined Hospitality full time and that same month attended her first all-hands meeting, held in Commons. As a team-building activity, a co-worker agreed to lead a Zumba class, which both Suarez and Sullivan expressed interest in. Suarez does not remember the exact wording that Sullivan used in a text exchange that occurred shortly before the class — she has changed phones and service providers, and did not back up her messages — but, she recalled, “he said something along the lines of, ‘I would love to get a private dance from you.’”

Suarez, distressed, texted back something short but firm. She thinks it was just one word: no. Suarez worried her job would be at risk if she sent a more forceful rejection. “I wanted to scream immediately,” Suarez said. “I wanted to say, ‘You’re fucking gross.’” 

At first, Suarez did not tell anyone about the incident and tried to suppress it. She blamed herself, believing that giving Sullivan the tie had encouraged his advance. She did not report Sullivan. Three friends of Suarez’s, one of whom is already quoted above as A., confirmed that Suarez told them about the incident a few years later, before she left Hospitality. Their recollections matched what Suarez told the News.

Three years later, Suarez decided to leave Hospitality, citing other workplace pressures including what she said was an incident of sexual harassment from a different manager. The News could not independently verify that claim. Working at Hospitality, she said, had become too taxing on her mental and physical health. 

On July 18, 2019, Suarez wrote a two-page letter, obtained by the News, explaining her decision to leave and reporting, for the first time, the incident of harassment she faced from Sullivan. 

“Robert made me feel like a powerless 20 year-old girl,” she wrote in the letter, “and for a long time I felt like I was alone in that feeling. I had decided to not speak about this particular incident until I noticed other female coworkers and even some female undergrad students expressing discomfort towards Robert, also disclosing how he is often ‘too touchy’ with many of the women around him.”

She sent the letter to her manager, two HR representatives, Associate Vice President of Hospitality Rafi Taherian and — because she was working at the Benjamin Franklin and Pauli Murray dining halls — to heads of college Charles Bailyn and Tina Lu. According to an email chain obtained by the News, Lu responded to Suarez’s email the next morning. Three days later Lu and Bailyn met with Suarez to discuss her concerns, offer support and help connect Suarez to the OIEA —  the body that could initiate a formal investigation. 

On July 29, 2019, Suarez received an email from Valarie Stanley, then director of the OIEA. Stanley wrote to Suarez that she had been forwarded the resignation letter, and that the incident with Sullivan “concerns me deeply!” She asked Suarez for a copy of Sullivan’s text, and offered to meet. “It takes great courage to bring these kinds of issues forward,” Stanley wrote. 

Suarez and Stanley never met. 

Suarez was offered two one-hour meeting slots by the OIEA, neither of which she could accommodate. Suarez proposed other times and did not receive a response. When Stanley emailed to suggest that Suarez contact her cell service provider to recover the text, Suarez replied that she had already tried without success, and told Stanley she was still waiting to hear back about her proposed times. Stanley encouraged Suarez to reschedule. 

By then it was Aug. 7. Suarez waited until Aug. 20 to ask the OIEA for a new meeting time and again received no response. On Sept. 12, she wrote once more: “I would still like to speak to [Stanley] regarding my resignation letter and the incidents involved.” The OIEA informed Suarez that Stanley would be out of the office until the end of the month and that she would receive notice when Stanley returned. Suarez did not receive further communication from the OIEA. She gave up on bringing a formal complaint against Sullivan. 

“It felt like they were so used to this,” Suarez said. “She just moved on.”

In fact, the OIEA had moved on. On Aug. 16, 2019 — just eight days after the proposed meeting slots, and four days before Suarez tried again — Stanley wrote in an email: “I have completed my investigation of the allegations made by Vanesa Suarez. I found no evidence to support her allegation that Robert Sullivan sexually harassed her.” 

Stanley continued: “[Suarez] said she would like to meet with me. However, after I suggested that she call her mobile carrier and she responded that she wasn’t able to retrieve the information from them, she said she couldn’t keep the appointment that she made with me. She did not respond to either mine or [another OIEA employee’s] invitation to schedule another meeting.” 

In a copy of the email obtained by the News, the recipients are redacted. Suarez says she was not a recipient. She was not even aware that an “investigation” had been opened. 

Suarez received a copy of the email from the OIEA this month; it was the only document provided by the OIEA after Suarez requested all records relating to her contact with the office.

A formal investigation, according to the OIEA’s General Procedures, includes interviews with relevant parties and other fact-finding measures, after which a Findings Report with a factual determination and a recommendation is provided to the complainant, respondent and respondent’s supervisor. Not all disclosures to the OIEA generate a formal investigation, which usually begins only after the aggrieved party has had an initial interview, is made aware of the options available to them and requests that the OIEA proceed with their complaint. 

Suarez was never offered the chance to request a formal investigation. But despite this, the OIEA — the office that enforces Yale’s anti-harassment policies — “investigated” and subsequently dismissed Suarez’s allegation without speaking to her. 

Stanley declined to comment, citing Yale’s confidentiality policy regarding OIEA complaints. 

It is unclear if the broader concern Suarez raised in her resignation letter — that Sullivan might have harassed other women as well — received further attention from either the OIEA, HR or Taherian. 

Taherian declined the News’ request for comment. 

Head of College advocates for change

In the spring 2023, a head of college, or HoC, began reaching out to former dining hall managers to inquire about negative experiences that managers may have had at Hospitality, according to two individuals with knowledge of the HoC’s efforts. The HoC declined to comment; the News is withholding their name out of respect for their privacy. 

A former operations administrator, J., told the News that she witnessed “inappropriate” conduct from Sullivan toward the HoC in one instance, and that on multiple occasions in spring 2023, she and the HoC discussed their shared discomfort about previous interactions with Sullivan. According to J., the HoC also expressed their intention to meet with former dining hall managers in order to better understand the culture of Hospitality, and to advocate for changes to the department. The HoC, J. said, “definitely was instrumental in getting the attention of leadership.” 

Former Hospitality manager L., also confirmed knowledge of the HoC’s efforts, but declined to provide a more detailed account. 

On March 29, 2023, an OIEA employee reached out to residential college assistant directors of operation, then called operations managers, to ask for their participation in “a review of the climate and culture within Residential Dining,” according to copies of the email reviewed by the News. 

OIEA finds Sullivan committed sexual misconduct

V. worked as a dining hall manager for more than a decade, from the mid-2000s through the mid-2010s. In February 2011, she experienced what the OIEA eventually characterized as nonconsensual “physical and sexual contact” from Sullivan. 

The News has obtained a copy of the OIEA’s Findings Report, which wrote that Sullivan’s behavior was “‘severe’ under a reasonable person standard.” In addition to V., the News spoke to four sources familiar with the specifics of the incident and the complaint. 

At the time of the incident, V. chose not to report Sullivan. Her job was already difficult enough, she told the News. And she knew that a co-worker had previously filed a complaint against Sullivan, but Sullivan didn’t seem to have faced any repercussions. 

The News spoke with that co-worker, a former manager, G., who worked under Sullivan in Hospitality’s retail department. In 2009, G. said, she filed a complaint with the Office for Equal Opportunity Programs, or OEOP, the predecessor organization of the OIEA, alleging that Sullivan verbally harassed her on a routine basis. She says this conduct included screaming and belittling comments, but not sexual harassment. The News could not obtain documents related to G.’s interactions with the OEOP. 

According to G., the OEOP told her that Sullivan had violated Yale’s policies. But, she says, they only recommended that G. be moved outside Sullivan’s chain of command, from retail into residential dining. G. left Yale in 2014. She said a few factors informed her decision to leave, including the fact that Sullivan had recently been promoted to Director of Residential Operations, and was again her supervisor. 

Based on what she heard from G., V. had no faith that filing a complaint would lead to any change. And V. feared that she could face retribution for naming Sullivan.

 “I didn’t feel like I had a recourse,” V. told the News. “I had to suppress it and continue to work with this man. And he would come and he would hug you… I just had to suppress it.”

In spring 2023, V., who now works in another Yale department, was asked to participate in the OIEA’s climate review. On April 21, 2023, she met with the OIEA and disclosed the 2011 incident. OIEA staff assured V. that it was not too late to file a formal complaint, but, she said, “I honestly believed it wasn’t gonna go anywhere.” On May 12, 2023, relying more on hope than trust, she filed anyway. 

From May through July, the OIEA interviewed V., Sullivan, and three witnesses — the OIEA calls all other non-parties “witnesses.” In this case, one witness provided a first-hand account of the incident and two witnesses provided corroborating accounts. 

On July 27, 2023, OIEA Director Diane Cornelius Charles informed V. and Sullivan that the OIEA had concluded its investigation. Witness testimony supported V.’s account, and the OIEA found that Sullivan had violated Yale’s Sexual Misconduct Policies. 

Charles also sent the report to Taherian and Taherian’s supervisor Jack Callahan, Yale’s senior vice president of operations.

“OIEA recommends that Hospitality leadership address this violation proportional to the behavior,” Charles wrote. 

Callahan did not respond to the News’ request for comment. 

Sullivan exits, issued “consultant” position 

On Aug. 9, 2023, Taherian emailed residential college administrators to inform them that “Bob Sullivan, Senior Director for Residential Dining, needed to take some time unexpectedly.” The News obtained several copies of this email. Stacey Hepburn-James, then director of strategic initiatives and business support, took the role of interim senior director. Taherian copied Hepburn-James, several administrators and Dean of Yale College Pericles Lewis. Sullivan was not a visible recipient of the email. 

Taherian’s phrasing suggested that the leave was temporary. As late as Oct. 12, 2023, Sullivan’s email was set with the automatic reply, “I will be out of the office for the next several weeks,” according to an email obtained by the News. But in mid-August, Sullivan was excluded from an organizational chart displayed at the pre-semester all-hands meeting, according to two workers present. 

On Sept. 8, 2023, Taherian emailed to announce that Sullivan would be retiring. The News has obtained multiple copies of Taherian’s email; the complete list of recipients is unknown because it was sent via blind copy. “I want to give my thanks and appreciation to Bob for his contributions to Hospitality and Yale,” Taherian wrote. 

By Oct. 2, 2023, the Hospitality website had been updated to reflect Hepburn-James’ role as interim senior director for residential dining, and Sullivan’s website profile was removed entirely. On Oct. 16, Yale Hospitality issued a press release appointing Hepburn-James to the senior director position in full. The release did not mention who she was succeeding. 

According to Taherian’s Sept. 8 email, Sullivan would formally retire on Jan. 1, 2024, and before that date, was to assist in a “seamless transition” by working remotely as an “operational consultant to the senior leadership team.”

But according to Yale’s Workday employee management software, Sullivan was issued a new position on Jan. 1, 2024, the same day that he retired: “Hospitality Consultant.” In that role his paygroup was listed as “Monthly.”

It is unclear what his responsibilities entailed. In Workday, Sullivan was not listed within Hospitality’s operating structure, but rather in a department labeled “UUGUUG UG Salaries,” which at different times in 2024 held a fluctuating collection of seemingly unrelated employees. 

According to a Yale College administrator familiar with the University’s employment practices, it is not unusual for recently retired executives to receive compensation during a transitionary period, in exchange for their continued advice and judgment. 

The consultant position might be an indication that Sullivan reached a settlement with Yale, according to Yale Law School professor Michael Wishnie ’87 LAW ’93. But, Wishnie said, continued compensation does not necessarily mean that Sullivan reached a settlement: “Without Yale saying more, it’s impossible to know.” 

Sullivan remained in the role of “Hospitality Consultant” until some point between Sept. 19 and Oct. 6, 2024, when he was removed from both Workday and the Yale Directory. The News asked a University spokesperson why Sullivan was issued the consultant role in Workday on January 1, 2024. The spokesperson did not directly respond to this inquiry. 

In July 2023, when the OIEA found that Sullivan had committed sexual misconduct, Taherian led the Hospitality department and served as Sullivan’s direct supervisor. As associate vice president, Taherian reported to Callahan. 

Both men were copied on the July 2023 OIEA report. Taherian was also a recipient of Suarez’s 2019 resignation letter, which described the harassment she said she faced from Sullivan. 

Changes at Hospitality

After Sullivan’s departure, a series of changes were enacted at Hospitality, according to 11 Hospitality employees and Yale College administrators, and several documents obtained by the News. A new “pod system” was put in place at the start of the fall 2023 semester, which grouped dining halls into three distinct pods, each under a mid-level manager. On Nov. 1, 2023, Callahan established a new “Campus Services” team within Operations, which moved Taherian and Hospitality under the supervision of John Barden, vice president for technology and campus services. 

On March 20, 2024, Barden and Callahan co-signed an email announcing that Taherian — Sullivan’s supervisor and the chief executive of Hospitality — was stepping down. 

The email, obtained by the News, named Hepburn-James and Adam Millman, senior director of retail, catering and auxiliaries, as “interim co-leaders of Yale Hospitality,” a role that the two still share. Between March 25, 2023, and the end of the academic year, Taherian was to serve as “strategic advisor.” 

“Missed moment”  

Fifteen current and former Hospitality employees expressed frustration with the lack of transparency surrounding Sullivan’s departure. 

Suarez, for her part, is glad that Sullivan left. But she is not confident that the administrators above him have had an honest reckoning with what happened and for how long it occurred. 

One former manager described Sullivan’s departure as a “missed moment.” They were disappointed that they did not see Yale taking clear steps to acknowledge and address what the manager saw as cultural failures in Hospitality.

Hospitality employees interviewed for this story spoke of the courage required to raise concerns, a fear of retribution, a feeling that administrators were not paying attention and a belief — justified or not — that their boss was untouchable.

The News repeatedly asked a University spokesperson if any efforts had taken place since July 2023 to ensure that Hospitality employees can effectively report their superiors for misconduct without fear of repercussion. The spokesperson did not directly respond to these inquiries.

Silence, it seems, is what everyone in Hospitality — workers and managers alike — has come to expect. Every employee approached for this story, including a number who declined to comment, even anonymously, indicated that they felt they could jeopardize their jobs by discussing Sullivan’s behavior or departure. No one, however, expressed surprise that administrators did not acknowledge a cultural problem at Hospitality, or communicate plans for improvement. 

“It’s Yale, baby,” one dining hall worker said, “they don’t tell us anything.”

If you experienced harassment as an employee of Yale Hospitality and are interested in discussing your experience with the News, contact investigations@yaledailynews.com.

Update, Oct. 25: This story has been updated to provide more information on Yale’s OIEA confidentiality policy.

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