Author Archives: Amalia Skilton

Don’t believe that the way you eat, or the way your body looks, reflects on yourself or your value as a person. It doesn’t.

New Haven is much different than it was when he took office, but it may not be much better.

Nobody likes inefficiency. Especially at Yale, we have limited time and energy, and we’re not interested in spending more resources — whether they’re hours on a paper or minutes in a meeting — than we need to accomplish our goals. When others take longer on work than we think they need, we get impatient; we »

Yishai Schwartz ’13 (“Separate service and advocacy,” Jan. 27) contends that Yalies should divide community service from advocacy in Dwight Hall and within our organizations. Schwartz is correct to tell Yalies that we are morally obliged to give some time to service and to remind us that service and advocacy are not the same. Yet »

Since 2009, I have spent thousands of hours organizing students on campus, doing community service in the city, and advocating for policy before New Haven’s administrative agencies and Board of Aldermen. These experiences — as a case manager and tax preparer for low-income people, as a leader and advocate in the LGBTQ community, as director »

Three years ago this fall, New Haven faced a moral and economic crisis. The Cedar Street Overflow Shelter — the city’s largest emergency shelter — was about to close its doors. Decimated by cuts in the state and city social services budgets, the shelter was about to leave over 100 men to spend the winter »

In the last fifty years, we’ve made progress toward legal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people. These victories are important, but too many of them have been important only — or primarily — for gay men and lesbians. As the entire LGBTQ movement charts our political goals for the coming years, »

Current Ward 1 Alderman Mike Jones’ ’11 recent decision not to run for a second term means that the race for his seat on the Board of Aldermen will soon begin. Before 2011’s aldermanic candidates begin to campaign, we wish to communicate with all potential Ward 1 voters about what is expected to occur in »

The News published a story Tuesday (“Democratic committee to endorse with closed vote,” Nov. 16) that omits several relevant factors in the Ward 1 Democratic Committee’s decision Sunday to use a closed-vote process to select its endorsed candidate for the 2011 aldermanic election. We write to clarify the processes available to the ward committee, and »

On Sept. 19, Seth Walsh also tried to hang himself at his home in Tehachapi, California. Seth identified as gay or bisexual, and his classmates bullied him so persistently that he asked his family to withdraw him from school. He escaped his school, but not the effects of the bullying. Seth’s family found him after »

Yale is a place infused with a tradition of political engagement. Over the last 18 months, this tradition has both continued and changed. During the 2008 elections, broad coalitions of students worked together to elect a long list of Democratic candidates. Last spring, Yalies again proved the depth of their political convictions, this time on »

In 1989, the term “marriage equality” had yet to enter the national vocabulary. No state recognized same-sex marriage — nor did any state constitution or federal law ban the practice. Now, near the end of 2009, same-sex marriage is legal in six states but banned by constitutional amendment in 30. Over the last 20 years, »