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

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

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

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

Students reject deportation of campus protesters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Disagreement on institutional neutrality

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

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

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

Other notable findings

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

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

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

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

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

Youth divided within

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Yale Youth Poll was first conducted in Fall 2024.

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Tam Vu ’25 came to his friend Neil Shah ’26 around a week ago, informing Shah that he had gotten bored and figured out how to hack RankYale. Vu figured out that Addison Goolsbee ’25, who created the website, didn’t privatize the password, allowing Vu and Shah “free reign over the rankings.” 

“It was so unbelievably easy to hack,” Shah told the News.

Rank Yale allowed the undergraduate population to vote on their peers’ popularity, resulting in a list of the top 100 “most popular” people in each year, as well as an overall list of the most popular people at Yale.

Goolsbee told the News that he was aware of “a pretty easily found exploit” but figured that it would take too long to fix it and that possible hacking would be “so easy to track.” 

“After the rankings closed, I wrote a script to detect people with suspicious behavior, and then went through each person manually to reset their scores if I could prove their vote history to be impossible,” Goolsbee said. “This was not a single hack, but rather several students independently finding the same exploit.”

Shah said he emailed Goolsbee after the rankings were posted, informing him that he and Vu had hacked the platform.

Shah initially believed that Goolsbee’s intention was to expose superficiality at Yale, citing that “it is obvious how much status matters to people at Yale.” He went on to discuss the theme of vanity as a shame, noting that passionate underclassmen often become trapped in the “superficial social spheres” that exist at Yale.

One of the people Vu and Shah placed on the final list was Andrea Chow, who later informed the News about the site being hacked.

“I am not particularly popular and have no desire to be. My friend hacked the website to put all his friends at the top of the rankings,” Chow said. “Mostly he thought it would be funny, but it also highlights the superficiality of a system that self-identifies as toxic and non-consensually subjects students’ faces and names to be part of a project that would rank them numerically.”

Shah hypothesized that Goolsbee changed the rankings that Shah and Vu edited. Goolsbee was ranked the No. 1 most popular by the website. Shah said that Goolsbee’s changing the rankings would have removed the brilliance of the idea to expose superficiality at Yale. The final ranking has people that were added during the hack, but Goolsbee went back and tried to correct what he suspected to be interference with the rankings. 

“The existence of the ranking platform served its purpose. So in my head, the fact that he tried to restore the ‘legitimacy’ of his rankings by removing 21 of the people I put at the top really confuses me,” Shah told the News. “I am unsure if I support his intentions anymore. From two hackers to a troll, we’re disappointed.”

Chow told the News that other people caught the “error” and have been talking about the rankings. 

They also shared they had no qualms in interfering with a system that they don’t believe should exist in the first place.

“I guess the more unique reason for building it is that I just thought it would be very interesting and also pretty funny to see how this works as a social commentary,” Goolsbee previously told the News when asked about creating the site.

Yale Computer Science Department is located at 51 Prospect St.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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In the first round, Boanoh received 1,047 votes, 44.4 percent of the total votes submitted for president. Meanwhile, competitor Brian Moore ’26 received 1,038 votes — or 44.1 percent of the vote — and Diego Paz ’27 received 271 votes.

As no candidate received a majority of the votes, the results were decided through a ranked-choice voting system. Boanoh won the second round with 1,182 votes, just eight votes above Moore’s 1,174.

Boanoh said the win was an “honor.”

“My mom and dad were beyond words when I told them about the results,” Boanoh wrote. “And the honor is even greater given that I get to share it with my good friend Jalen. We’re taking this weekend to celebrate, but then it’s all systems go on working for the student body.”

In total, 2,356 Yale students voted for the office of president, 346 more than last year.

Boanoh wrote that the most pressing topic on his mind at the moment is addressing international students and their presence on campus.

“With four students having their visas revoked in the past week, I want to do everything in my power to make sure students are connected with the resources they need to protect themselves legally and have the peace of mind to make it through the rest of this semester,” Boanoh wrote.

Bradley mirrored Boanoh’s sentiments, saying he looks forward to “rolling up his sleeves to help make Yale even better.” He thanked his campaign team and his fellow candidates for sharing their visions for the betterment of the student body.

This election would also mark the best performance by a solo ticket in recent Yale history, with Moore receiving an unprecedented number of votes.

On Saturday, Moore took to Instagram to offer an unscripted message of concession and encouragement to his supporters.

“I am utterly exhausted, and at the end of the day, I lost fair and square. I fully accept my defeat,” Moore said in the video. “Even though we came up eight votes short, I still believe I made a lasting impression, hopefully, on the discourse and dialogue around these central issues in the community.”

Bradley won his race for Council Vice President with 1,380 votes, 58.6 percent of all votes for vice president. However, Emily Nguyen ’27, his opponent, received 974 votes — 41.4 percent of the vote. In total, 2,354 students voted for the office of the vice president.

The election also confirmed wins for Kingson Wills ’26 as the YCC’s events director; Julien Amsellem ’27, who ran uncontested, for Junior Class Council president; and Micah Draper ’28 for Sophomore Class Council president.

Esha Garg ’26, YCC vice president and election commission chair, said that this year marked a relatively unprecedented amount of student engagement.

“Mimi and I have been deeply impressed by every single candidate and their vision for Yale,” Garg wrote to the News.

Following the transition period, the new YCC administration will take office at 12 p.m. on Saturday, May 3.

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The pop-up exhibition, co-hosted by the Program in Jewish Studies and the Chaplain’s Office, and curated by professor Sarit Kattan Gribetz and Jewish Studies librarian Konstanze Kunst, displayed haggadot — the traditional book read at Passover — from across many centuries and countries, showcasing Jewish history and tradition in advance of the holiday of Passover.

“I wanted to bring people together around a shared topic of learning, so that people would be able to come together and each learn something new that they didn’t know when they walked in,” Gribetz said. “How do you create a community around learning and books and holidays?”

Gribetz began planning this event a few months ago, after attending a meeting with various student groups and the chaplain’s office about the upcoming holiday of Passover.

In the exhibit, by using historical materials from Jewish communities around the world, including Italy, Amsterdam, North Africa and Russia, she hoped visitors would engage with a diverse set of traditions.

“There’s something very powerful about seeing and coming into direct contact with artifacts from the past,” Gribetz said. “There’s something different about seeing a medieval manuscript or rare book in person, rather than seeing it on a computer screen or in a printed book. That’s why the amazing resources at the library can be very powerful for sparking academic interest and curiosity.”

Gribetz found the partnership between faculty, librarians and graduate students meaningful while she was assembling the exhibit. The collaborative atmosphere, where different groups are encouraged to participate and contribute to projects such as this one, creates an inclusive community that she values.

Ruth Foster GRD ’30, a first-year doctoral student seeking a religious studies degree, presented information for visitors about two modern “art haggadot” from Israel at the exhibit. The pages were full of richly colored art depicting the Passover story.

“Even though, historically and geographically, there are different interpretations of the Exodus story, there’s also an inherent intertextuality to all of [the haggadot], because they’re telling the same story and using the same images,” Foster said, “even if one is from Amsterdam in the 18th century and one is from Haifa in the 21st century.”

Foster finds the haggadot interesting to compare, because each of them is responding to the moment in which they were created, reflecting various traditions and ideologies.

Among the other haggadot in the room were ones from 18th-century Amsterdam, Communist Russia and one created by Holocaust survivors.

On the other side of the room, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library curator Agnieszka Rec showed visitors a Latin medieval manuscript. Not a haggadah like many of the artifacts in the room, this book told Christian medieval communities how to calculate the date of Easter depending on the date of Passover.

The manuscript showcased the interaction between different religious communities in the medieval era.

“A lot of medieval Latin manuscripts talk about Judaism in extremely negative terms,” Rec said. However, this manuscript demonstrates the constructive ways that Christian communities interacted with Judaism, which she values.

Daniel Dumontet ’28 came to the exhibit because he took a class with Gribetz last semester.

“A lot of the time, it seems like the holidays and religious texts in Judaism are insurmountable in their tradition,” Dumontet said, “and yet something like [this exhibit] shows that it’s actually a very alive religion that we can all make our own and draw historical lessons from.”

The haggadah created by Holocaust survivors stood out to Dumontet. He found the expressive drawings in the book very meaningful and thought they evoked emotions similar to those of the ancient Israelites fleeing Egypt in the Passover story.

Gribetz thinks that over time, Passover has become a family holiday, with traditions unique to each group that celebrates it. At the same time, she said, it has a communal dimension.

“[Displaying the haggadot] creates a bridge between home, family and community, as well as learning and culture,” Gribetz said.

Passover begins April 12 at sundown.

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The Yale Hunger and Homelessness Action Project, or YHHAP, is hosting its biannual YHHAP Fast on April 12. Students are encouraged to donate a dining hall meal swipe or make a direct contribution to support New Haven-based organizations fighting food and housing insecurity.

“The Fast allows us to financially assist New Haven organizations doing the critical hands-on work,” said Isabella Barboza-Rodriguez ’26, one of YHHAP’s co-chairs. “It also gives students not involved in YHHAP the chance to consider the issues many New Haven residents face, considering that 22 percent of New Haveners experience food insecurity yearly.”

Established as a recurring campus-wide event, the Fast has become Yale’s largest student-run fundraiser, collecting over $18,000 last semester alone. 

The majority of funds come from donated meal swipes, with additional contributions through Venmo and YHHAP’s website. This semester, the funds will be distributed among three local partners: Haven’s Harvest, Continuum of Care and the New Haven Inner City Enrichment Center.

“Donating meal swipes makes giving much more accessible and appealing to students,” explained Hari Manchi ’27, a YHHAP Fast member. “Every dollar makes a significant impact in many people’s lives.”

Students not on the traditional meal plan can still participate in the Fast. For example, by donating directly through Venmo (@Yhhap-Yale) or the YHHAP website, or by helping spread the word through group chats, clubs, or social media.

This semester, YHHAP is also collaborating with student groups like Whales of Yale, Yale Visual Artists and the Yale College Council. Sherkaan, Ay Arepa and Rubamba are also offering 15 percent discounts to students on the day of the Fast, and Willoughby’s is donating coffee to support YHHAP’s tabling efforts.

Beyond fundraising, YHHAP hopes the event sparks a shift in how students view their relationship with New Haven. 

“Being at Yale sometimes compels us to stay in the ‘Yale bubble,’” Barboza-Rodriguez noted. “It’s important for us to take a step back and try to help the community that we call home for these four years.”

Looking ahead, Jung hopes the Fast will grow to allow students to donate more than one swipe and possibly even contribute swipes they would forgo during religious fasts. 

“We’d also love for there to be increased interaction between the Yale community and the partner organizations—like group volunteering,” she added.

The fast will take place this Friday.

Correction, April 11: The article has been updated to reflect that Fast will happen on Saturday, not Friday.

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The introduction comes after Yale College Council advocacy for expanded options in dining halls to address the nutritional needs of students with dietary restrictions. The “avocado pulp” will be available in Berkeley, Davenport, Grace Hopper, Jonathan Edwards, Pierson, Timothy Dwight, Trumbull Breakfast Express dining halls.

“I’ve had it literally every day. I really wanted the avocado spread back,” said Amy Choi ’27, “I remember when they said they were doing Breakfast Express, I was like, “Oh, that means the avocado spread is coming back.”

Choi noted that the dining halls served avocado during her first year at Yale. 

She emphasized that the taste seemed similar to what she remembered, although she added that she has begun adding bagel seasoning for additional flavor.

Abigail Jolteus ’25 said that she was “thrilled” about the addition. She explained that though she usually puts the spread on a bagel, she also regularly adds toppings and seasonings.

“Honestly, I love it. I love avocado in general and I feel like you can’t really go wrong with it,” Jolteus said. 

Nina Bodow ’28 noted that she had seen the new offering advertised on screens in Berkeley’s dining hall and decided to try the new offering. According to Bodow, the dining hall appeared to be out of toast that morning, so she reached for a bagel to complete her meal. 

She said that the flavor did not taste artificial or “pre-smashed.” Bodow observed that although she had been concerned about the temperature — whether it would be too cold — the avocado was at room temperature “in a good way.” 

“I don’t normally have time to eat breakfast. But I can see myself reaching for [the avocado],” Bodow told the News. “In [Breakfast Express], I would still prefer yogurt or oatmeal, but it’s definitely a good save for your breakfast.” 

Ninety percent of avocados in the United States are sourced from Mexico.   

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Their shared platform has three prongs: inclusivity, amplify and accountability. They hope to address them using their experience in campus politics and affinity organizations.

Paz’s resume is lengthy. Last year, he served as the Vice President of the First Year College Council and currently serves as a senator for Pauli Murray College. Outside of the YCC, he is a campus tour guide, a college aide and a peer liaison at the LGBTQ Center. This summer, he will be the co-head counselor of the Cultural Connections first-year orientation program.

He said that the decision to run for president felt like a next step, or progression toward promoting community on campus.

“I’ve had so many different avenues of witnessing all of the different parts that go into what the YCC is, but also the larger mission of what it means to serve in student government,” Paz said. “And throughout this year, especially with a lot of the changes that have been happening, it became very clear to me that I wanted to be able to be an advocate for all of the different opinions, thoughts, and ideologies on campus.”

Nguyen is no different, balancing three demanding roles within the Council as Academic Policy Deputy Director, a senator for Berkeley College and a Sophomore Class Council Representative.

She cited specific changes such as the closing of Schwarzman Commons on Fridays and the removal of “crucial” stipend programs such as the summer storage reimbursement for low-income students. She hopes to mitigate further rollout of programs mirroring these using their platform “Better Yale.”

Together, they hope to pioneer strategies of action against administration and garner expansive understandings of the various corners of campus life.

“We didn’t really know much about each other before,” Paz said. “We had worked together in the first-year college council and in the Senate. When it came to the process of deciding who I was going to run with, though, it became very clear to me that Emily’s work effort and ability to advocate for what students demand really attracted me to her as my vice presidential ticket.”

Paz said that while he and Nguyen inhabit different spaces on campus, they have been able to come together over a common goal of creating a YCC for all. And their wide range of experiences with policy issues in YCC makes them “well equipped to have institutional knowledge,” Nguyen believes.

The two other prongs, amplify and accountability, go hand in hand with one another, according to Paz and Nguyen. Together, they hope to uplift student voices and compel administrators to listen. Paz praised the efforts of student protestors, in particular those near Beinecke Plaza on the day of McInnis’ inauguration.

When asked what course of action the candidates would take if offered a simple administrative ‘No,’ Paz and Nguyen reinforced that they firmly believe in the efforts of renegotiation and circumnavigation.

“Negotiation, compromise and bargaining are all facets of what make the Yale College Council so powerful,” Paz said. “Better Yale is really a campaign that is focused on ensuring that we are not stopping at ‘No’ and that we’re continuing to see what other avenues there are in order to make student voices heard.”

Paz also iterated the importance of “realistic goals,” or goals grounded in institutional knowledge and an understanding of what tends to get passed in the YCC and later adopted on a campus-wide scale.

To them, both first-generation, low-income students, a realistic goal that their opponents’ campaigns neglect to touch on is the importance of financial policy.

“We want to ensure that students, especially low-income students and even middle-class students who do not get significant financial aid packages, feel like they can really engage and succeed,” Nguyen said. “We propose ideas like free printing, free lodging, stipends for course material reimbursement, and stipends for air travel. That’s what sets us apart.”

Their campaign team is majority composed of students not involved with the YCC and offer “outsider perspectives.” If elected, they also propose to make the seemingly “distant” student government become accessible through semiweekly tabling on Cross Campus and one-on-one conversations.

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

The post YCC CANDIDATE PROFILE: Diego Paz ’27 and Emily Nguyen ’27 appeared first on Yale Daily News.