One question: How?
It is easy to campaign on a promise.
Every candidate this April will tell you they will fight for students, demand accountability, and force Yale’s hand. That is the easy part.
But the most important question you must ask is: How?
Leverage isn't a promise. It's a practice. It's knowing which tools exist, which ones actually move administrators, and how to deploy them with crushing competence.
We’ve already built that practice. We’ve already reimagined “How?” We’ve already learned the institutional knowledge through experience.
We don’t merely have promises. We have something much more valuable — whether we succeed or fail or inevitably try again, and again, and again — that gives our promises a viable path forward to maximize effectiveness: the experience to leverage results.
Reimagine the full extent of meaningful advocacy. Here's what it looks like in action:
1. Mass Action Brings Students to the Fore
Alex led the ISA/SEA petition, the largest student government petition at Yale since the 1980s. The work we did was proof that YCC-led, unified student pressure necessarily changes the calculus for administrators. When thousands of our fellow classmates can channel their civic power, the issues we fight for become a fight for Yale’s reputation. We know how to build that pressure and deploy it to maximize opportunity. We’ve experienced the pitfalls, adapted, and beat the learning curve. We are ready to bring students to the fore.
This is where real leverage for change happens.
2. Alumni Networks Can Then Be Used as an Infrastructure of Pressure
During the ISA/SEA fight, Alex deliberately evoked alumni donors to shift the stakes. Alex spoke at regional Yale clubs and did outreach to alumni associations, showing the Yale network that their beloved Yale experience was under attack. This instinct requires formalization through experience. Yale’s administration answers to its donors in ways it simply does not answer to its students. Repeated, relentless, and systematic alumni outreach — one that rapidly alerts engaged alumni when administrators make decisions that contradict the promises Yale makes to students at enrollment — puts untold pressure where it can actually be felt. If Dean Lewis won’t pick up our call, he will certainly pick up the donors’ calls. This is infrastructure no YCC president has built. We have experience. We will.
This is where real leverage for change happens.
3. Competence Becomes a Cudgel
Part of why Alex’s ISA/SEA advocacy made Dean Lewis so visibly uncomfortable was that he didn't walk in with platitudes and talking points. Alex walked in with facts — gathered through active meetings with the Yale Office of Development (fundraising office) — ready to counter YCDO’s assertions with the statements of his own administrative bodies. Competent, specific, well-sourced questions are threatening to administrators who are used to managing and dodging students rather than answering them. We will institutionalize this within YCC. And when administrators inevitably dodge the hard questions: We will go public.
This is where real leverage for change happens.
4. To Bait National Media: Put Yale’s Reputation on the Line
Yale administrators are obviously extremely sensitive to how their decisions look in the national light. With their enormous machinery of access, they can get away with reneging on student support the moment Yalies matriculate. A well-timed op-ed, an interview with media sources on the college affordability crisis, a fight taken to the steps of the U.S. Capitol, a story about broken promises at the wealthiest universities in the world can all land more potently than any public statement ever could. We know how to write them, pitch them, and time them. Our advocacy is already featured in media from The Nation to the Congressional Record. We are not afraid to use the knowledge that embarrassment at the national level can produce the concessions that years of polite advocacy cannot.
This is where real leverage for change happens.
5. Coalition-Building Across Yale’s Constituencies Magnifies the Cause
Yale College is not the whole of Yale. Our fight cannot be fought alone. Alex sponsored the first-ever joint YCC resolution with the Graduate & Professional School Senate on academic freedom, and he used it to bring both the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and FAS-SEAS (Faculty Senate) to the table for the first time. How can we defend against budgetary cuts to instructional faculty without bringing the Faculty Senate to the table? We have a fiercely competent record of building a cross-institutional coalition that gives student government a seat in conversations about faculty cuts, institutional governance, and University-wide budget decisions. Graduate workers, faculty unions, and peer student governments are necessary collaborators. Most YCC presidents never think to call them. We already have.
This is where real leverage for change happens.
6. Consistent YDN Notification Provides for Unabated Accountability
It takes a trained eye to find Yale’s unpublicized decisions that affect Yalies’ student experiences. When YCC finds out about policy decisions, it is our duty to flag it for the YDN. Throughout our tenures in YCC, we have tipped the YDN off to several front-page headline stories to call attention to the clandestine cuts and erroneous decisions of Yale administrators. When alumni and donors have access to these headlines, the pressure on administration shifts in ways that are unmistakable. It is time to make Dean Lewis’ approval rating clear. Our cause is stronger when the truth is published because truth is accountability.
This is where real leverage for change happens.
7. All amidst Strategic Timing of Pressure
Accreditation cycles. Trustee meetings. Major donor events. US News rankings season. These are the moments when Yale’s reputational exposure is highest. Pressure applied hits harder and faster. We cannot be reactive; we must proactively chase these waves (shoutout to GPSS President, Sam Haddad LAW ‘26). All of this requires mapping the University's calendar and deploying our leverage at the moments when administration cannot afford to look away.
This is where real leverage for change happens.