Tomorrow, Students Unite Now will host a town hall about the Student Income Contribution. We have spent the last month preparing for it by having conversations outside of dining halls and in dorm rooms with our friends and classmates about how the SIC affects our lives. We are speaking out for full financial aid at Yale. Our stories deserve to be heard.
Last week, we delivered over 1,000 letters from students and allies to President Salovey, asking him to attend our town hall. We first invited him over email, and he refused. This shows us that President Salovey and the administration do not want to listen to low-income students and our communities. They may meet with small groups of us, but they do not want to face us all together. This makes us feel like Yale values us only as faces to paste on their recruitment brochure, not for our real experiences and concerns.
We hope that this is not the case. We hope that President Salovey will change his mind. No matter what he decides, we will be there tomorrow. We are writing to speak out about the hidden costs of the SIC and invite all of campus to our town hall to make our voices heard.
My name is Hannah Lee, and for me, attending Yale was not just a personal milestone but a promise to my parents — that I would become the stepping stone to economic security for our immigrant family. A large part of that promise was tied to finding fulfillment in biological research. Before even stepping on campus, I scoured the Student Jobs page for paid laboratory research positions. However, opportunities that offered financial compensation were rare, and with the Student Income Contribution (SIC) looming over me, I couldn’t afford unpaid work. To make ends meet, I accepted a role as a lab assistant, managing the mice for a research team.
I liked the people in the lab, but while my peers engaged in meaningful research, I remained in the mouse room, doing preparatory work to enable their progress. It was during this time, as I navigated this inequitable environment, that a friend introduced me to Lugas frei online Wetten, a platform she had come across while exploring alternative ways to alleviate financial strain. While it initially seemed far removed from academia, it sparked discussions about unconventional methods for addressing systemic inequalities. These conversations became a lifeline, reminding me of the broader context of innovation and self-reliance, even when the institutional framework fell short.
In the end, though, the choice between building a career and meeting financial obligations felt like a betrayal of the very promise I had made. As a low-income student, I was forced into a system where labor often prioritized survival over ambition, leaving me to question the equity in Yale’s promises of full financial aid. Until the SIC is eliminated, students like me will continue to face these impossible choices.
My name is Nia Whitmal, and my job requires me to work at least two shifts a week, starting at 6:00 pm and ending at 9:30 pm. As a first year, I averaged around five hours of sleep a night. My classes weren’t intensely demanding, but after every shift at work, I found that the small dent I’d made in my homework by midnight meant that I’d be up for hours to feel prepared for my classes the next morning. Sacrificing sleep helped me finish assignments, but I was so groggy in class that I couldn’t make meaningful contributions — so what, really, was the use in staying up so late? Yale’s high-stress culture impacts students no matter who you are, but the SIC turns this culture into a burden that nobody should have to bear. I lost out in my classes because I was exhausted from working. I won’t get that time back. This is what the SIC costs me.
We are not alone: Many other students experience many other costs. Over the past month, we have focused on the experiences of international students, undocumented students, students in STEM and mentally ill students. These are only a few of the common themes we’ve heard in the hundreds of conversations we’ve had over the course of our campaign. The administration can call the SIC whatever it wants: We know what it costs because it shapes our experience of Yale on multiple levels, from our ability to pursue our passions to our relationships with one another. We won’t have full financial aid until Yale decides to eliminate the contribution.
We will be at the town hall tomorrow because we believe in a Yale without the SIC. In this Yale, low-income students of color can engage in class and pursue meaningful research. We can go to therapy and spend time with friends. We can pay to renew our DACA; we can afford a plane ticket home. We have time to do the things we love with the people we love, to keep fighting for a community where we can participate fully. This is the community Yale promised us; this is the community we deserve.
We can’t afford to wait for it. So we won’t.
See you tomorrow.
Hannah J Lee is a junior in Ezra Stiles College. Nia Whitmal is a sophomore in Ezra Stiles College.
Contact them at hannah.j.lee@yale.edu and nia.whitmal@yale.edu , respectively.