Lucy Hodgman, Contributing Photographer

On Thursday, students gathered in a march organized by the student advocacy group Students Unite Now to call for equity in the University’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The march set off from Beinecke Plaza and began with speeches from members of SUN and several other affiliated student advocacy groups. From there, students marched to Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall, where University President Peter Salovey’s office is located. 

The community advocacy organization New Haven Rising, as well as four local unions and the Yale Unions Retirees Association, were also affiliated with the event. 

“What we want to build together is a just recovery from the pandemic, not a future where racial and class inequalities have worsened,” SUN organizer Naomi D’Arbell Bobadilla ’22 said. “SUN and New Haven Rising and the unions are together because we want that racial and class based justice, and meeting those demands are all part of getting us closer to racial and class equity.” 

SUN’s website lists “full-need coverage of educational costs, timely therapy with representative therapists and paying a fair share to New Haven,” as the march’s specific demands. 

The march featured several illuminated pillars, which members of SUN constructed and covered with pictures of Yale undergraduate students. 

“These photos were garnered from going and talking to over 660 students face to face,” D’Arbell Bobadilla said. “Each of these photos represents one student on campus that had a conversation about these demands and can say exactly how and why these demands would improve their experiences at Yale.”

Protesters carried the pillars in their march from Beinecke Plaza to Salovey’s office, leaving them outside of SSS. 

D’Arbell Bobadilla explained that the light towers were SUN’s donation to the University’s current capital campaign, a fundraising initiative that launched this fall and aims to raise $7 billion. 

“The title of our march is ‘Lux et Veritas,’” D’Arbell Bobadilla told the News. “We’re bringing light in the form of these towers and we are bringing truth in the form of our stories from the speakers.” 

The speeches at Beinecke Plaza began with the testimonies of three SUN organizers, who had prepared remarks on their involvement with the group and their personal connections to the march’s demands. 

Aly Moosa ’25 emphasized the importance of “institutional support,” calling on Yale to cover the $3,700 that the University estimates students will need to pay for textbooks and the cost of student living throughout their time at Yale. 

For Moosa, adequate financial support from the University is integral to affirming to students with marginalized identities that they belong at Yale. 

“My fight started long before this rally, or even before I stepped foot on campus,” Moosa said. “Injustice and oppression are not new concepts to me or any person with marginalized identities. There’s no end to marginalization. This is our life. This is who we are.” 

After Moosa, Caroline Reed ’24 took to the stage to call for reforms to the University’s mental health care services. 

In particular, Reed recalled her own experience waiting several months to be assigned a clinician — an experience which, she emphasized, “is not unique.”

“My own experience, and all of the countless experiences like mine that I’ve heard are why I think that SUN’s demand for increasing the number of therapists and especially the diversity of therapists on this campus is so important,” Reed said. 

For Alex Contreras-Montesano ’23, the third SUN organizer who spoke at the event, changes to University mental health care services are also a priority. 

Contreras-Montesano called for diversity among the University’s mental health care clinicians, emphasizing the importance of therapists that can “respect and relate to” Yale students. 

“Now, it’s up to me,” Contreras-Montesano said. “And now, it’s up to us to demand the equitable, reflective and affirming care that we’ve always deserved.”

University spokesperson Karen Peart told the News that mental health services at Yale and universities across the United States have recently experienced increased demand from students. 

Peart pointed to the addition of Yale College Community Care and additional therapists to Yale Mental Health and Counseling as examples of the University’s commitment to “ensuring Yale’s mental health services grow alongside need.”

“A large percentage of the clinical staff identify as persons of color and/or Latinx,” Peart added. “There are a number of international clinicians and clinicians who have extensive experience with LGBTQ+ issues.”

Student advocates representing the Yale Young Democratic Socialists of America, Elis for Rachael, the Endowment Justice Coalition and Disability Empowerment for Yale also spoke at the event. 

D’Arbell Bobadilla emphasized the importance of the coalition of student groups working together towards the same demands. 

“The underlying principle is that undergraduate groups are fighting for ourselves,” D’Arbell Bobadilla said. “There’s this real solidarity between us. The underlying message is that without these changes that SUN is fighting for, we will move back instead of forward on racial and class equity. But that’s not to say that these are the only things we need for just recovery.”

Speakers from the associated groups articulated the intersection of other issues with the University’s equitable recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Abigail Maher ’24, an organizer with the EJC, demanded that the University divest from the fossil fuel industry and ethically allocate its endowment. 

“Yale must not only divest, but redistribute that wealth to local community power and intercommunal sustainability,” Maher said. “Yale cannot be healthy or have a just recovery as long as it is invested in imperial structures and environmental destruction, while perpetuating an extractive relationship with the local community of which it is a part.”

Peart told the News that the University was “aligned with the goal of stopping climate change.”

“However, Yale has taken a different approach from full divestment, instead evaluating fossil fuel companies based on a set of principles derived from ‘The Ethical Investor,’ which guides Yale’s investment activity, and making ineligible for investment any company whose actions are antithetical to a transition to a carbon-free economy,” Peart wrote. 

SUN’s rally comes in the wake of the University’s announcement this November that the Student Income Contribution would be eliminated. 

“The policy changes announced this fall are the latest in more than five years of policy enhancements and initiatives generated by the Provost’s Financial Aid Working Group, which regularly convenes senior Yale officials to connect with current students, members of the Yale College Council, and Yale’s financial aid professionals to review Yale’s financial aid policies,” Peart told the News.

SUN, which has lobbied for the elimination of the student income contribution since 2012, claimed the development as a victory. 

“Part of this march is celebrating the elimination of the charged part of the student income contribution,” D’Arbell Bobadilla told the News. “That’s something that my friends have taken a risk for multiple times, something that I’ve organized on since I was a first-year. Part of this is to celebrate the fact that we changed the University’s priorities from what they were back in 2018, when we had our first sit-in.” 

A full list of SUN’s demands is available online.