Yale University

Yale Students Launch Hunger Strike Over School’s Connection To Gaza

April 16, 2024 Michael Arria, Mondoweiss. Resist! Gaza, Hunger Strike, Israel, Palestine, Student Activism, Yale University

Fourteen students at Yale University are on a hunger strike over the school’s connection to arms manufacturers currently supplying Israel with weaponry. The group sent Yale University Peter Salovey a letter declaring that their strike would begin if the school did not take immediate action on the issue. “We here at Yale University have witnessed this ongoing genocide from the comforts of not only the heart of the empire that is funding the military conquest and colonization of Palestine, but from the distance and security provided by the investments of this University which profit from this mass ethnic cleansing,” it reads.

Yale Graduate And Professional Student Workers Vote To Unionize

January 11, 2023 Megan Vaz, Yale Daily News. Organize! Higher Education, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs, Yale University

In a landslide victory, Yale’s graduate and professional student workers have voted to unionize, marking a historic first after decades of organizing on campus. According to the National Labor Relations Board’s final tally, 1,860 of 2,039 voters favored forming a collective bargaining unit under Local 33 – UNITE HERE, the graduate student union that has fought for University recognition since 1990. Daily Union Elections, which tracks NLRB records, listed Local 33’s election filing as the second largest in the nation in 2022, with 4,000 graduate and professional workers eligible for union representation. Including challenged ballots that went uncounted due to wide vote margin, about two-thirds of those eligible to vote showed up to the polls or mailed in ballots.

Yale Agrees To First Graduate Union Election In Three Decades

November 2, 2022 Megan Vaz and Miranda Wollen, Yale Daily News. Organize! Higher Education, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs, Yale University

Yale will recognize a union election for graduate workers for the first time in history, marking another significant step forward in Local 33’s three decades of organizing efforts. The move, announced on Oct. 28 by University Provost Scott Strobel, came days after Local 33 leaders submitted an election petition to the National Labor Relations Board in Hartford. The petition was backed by authorization cards signed by over 75 percent of the graduate and professional school workers with full time or part-time jobs. In accordance with federal labor law, Yale was granted two weeks to respond to the petition and begin negotiating election parameters with Local 33 and the NLRB. “The petition serves as a formal request for a union election that will be conducted and overseen by the NLRB Regional Director to ensure a fair, inclusive, and democratic election,” Strobel wrote in his statement.

Love & Rage Against The Machine: Sitting In At The Yale Investments Office

December 26, 2018 Staff, Melindatuhus.net Resist! Congress, Electoral Politics, Occupation, Yale University, Youth Activism

The Sunrise Movement, an organization of young people that made its debut after the 2016 election, helped elect several new pro-climate action members of Congress this year and has been raising hell in D.C. since the election, sitting in (and getting arrested) in Nancy Pelosi’s office and visiting the offices of dozens of other Congressmembers – a thousand-strong – to demand that they support a Select Committee for a Green New Deal that would treat the climate crisis as the emergency it is, and includes a jobs creation piece that would provide employment in the clean energy sector for anyone wanting a job.

Yale Graduate Teachers Launch Hunger Strike Over Bid To Unionize

June 17, 2017 Roqayah Chamseddine, www.mintpressnews.com Resist! Higher Education, Hunger Strikes, Unions, Yale University

By Roqayah Chamseddine for Mint Press News - Graduate teachers at Yale University decided to unionize on February 23, after a vote by secret ballot administered by the National Labor Relations Board. They are now being stonewalled by an administration that refuses to negotiate with them. In light of the university’s rejection of first contract negotiations, graduate teachers launched an indefinite fast aimed at pressing the administration into negotiations. One of the teachers taking part in the fast is Emily Sessions, a graduate teacher at Yale from the History of Art Department. Sessions told Shadowproof that they began fasting on April 25 “because we have waited for years for the Yale administration to come to the negotiating table.” The Yale administration has kept them waiting. “So we decided to wait without eating,” Sessions said. All those taking part committed to fasting until the Yale administration agreed to negotiate, “unless a doctor said they are at risk of permanent damage to their health.” Some teachers, including Sessions, went as long as 14 days without eating or drinking anything but water. Sessions indicated on May 22 they celebrated the breaking of the fast with “thousands” of allies in “a Commencement Day demonstration.” The message of the demonstration was this is “just the beginning, Yale.”

Yale Divests $10 million From Fossil Fuels

April 18, 2016 Ayla Besemer and Finnegan Schick, www.yaledailynews.com Resist! Divestment, Fossil Fuels, Higher Education, Yale University

By Ayla Besemer and Finnegan Schick for Yale News - In a Tuesday letter to Yale’s Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility, Chief Investment Officer David Swensen reported that after months of talking with Yale’s external investment managers about the potential risks associated with investments in coal and oil, around $10 million of the endowment has been removed from three publicly traded fossil fuel producers. Tuesday’s message follows a letter penned by Swensen in 2014, in which he asked Yale’s investment managers to consider climate change in their investment choices.

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