Tim Tai, Senior Photographer

The Presidential Search Student Advisory Council, or SAC, announced on Tuesday a series of listening sessions over the next several weeks for undergraduate, graduate and professional students to share their visions for the University’s 24th president.

The SAC has 15 student members and is composed of four undergraduate, four graduate and four professional students; The acting presidents of the Yale College Council, the Graduate Student Assembly and the Graduate & Professional Student Senate serve as ex-officio members of the committee. In the email, the SAC wrote that the listening sessions represent their “second part” of gathering student input, following the announcement of an anonymous form which the SAC announced Nov. 1. This input will inform their report to the Presidential Search Committee, which Yale’s next president will also receive.

Yale College members of the SAC will host listening session for all undergraduate students today at 8 p.m. in the Silliman College buttery and on Wednesday, Nov. 15, at 7 p.m. on Zoom. Additionally, they will hold a session specifically for Eli Whitney, non-traditional and veteran students this Friday at 5 p.m. in room 215 in the Annex at the Schwarzman Center. Graduate School members will host listening sessions for GSAS students at 7 p.m. this Thursday in room A-51 at the Watson Center, on Wednesday, Nov. 15, in Room 208 at William L. Harkness Hall and on Tuesday, Nov. 28, in Room 136 at the Humanities Quadrangle. The SAC’s Graduate and Professional Student Senate members plan to hold their in-person sessions today at 4 p.m. and on Tuesday, Nov. 14, at 5 p.m. in room L115 at the Sterling Hall of Medicine room A-53 of the Watson Center, respectively. They will also hold two Zoom sessions this Thursday and on Monday, Nov. 13.

“We hope these peer-to-peer sessions will provide an opportunity for candor and transparency, and we encourage all students to attend one of these sessions,” the SAC members wrote in Tuesday’s announcement email.

Jamil Rahman GRD ’27 told the News that the SAC was working to finalize the details of the listening sessions at their weekly meeting on Monday night, but that the members decided to leave the listening sessions “pretty open” and dependent on the number of students who show up.

He added that although last week’s anonymous form has received significant traffic, he believes that the listening sessions will be even more important in working toward the SAC’s goal of getting the most student feedback.

“People are filling out the survey in pretty good numbers,” Rahman said. “But there’s just something about face to face interaction that gets people to speak out more and be a little more open about what’s on their mind.”

Milton Gilder DIV ’25 told the News that as of last night, the SAC’s form had over 870 responses.

Gilder also said that he anticipates the SAC to begin analyzing the information that it has collected from the survey and will collect from the listening sessions, adding that “it’s been a pretty rapid timeline” and that the Search Committee is “signaling” that they are moving quickly with interviews.

“I would hope students would engage honestly and not hold back and act and speak with candor, both in the survey and in the listening sessions,” he said. “It seems incidental, but it’s actually quite important to have a collective mass to show what actual students care about in this process as we search for the next president.”

Per the email, the Presidential Search Committee has provided funding for “light refreshments” to be provided at each in-person session.