Tim Tai, Senior Photographer

The Graduate and Professional Student Senate and the Graduate Student Assembly have selected four professional and four graduate students, respectively, to contribute to the selection of Yale’s next president, per a Monday announcement by Presidential Search Committee Chair Joshua Bekenstein ’80. 

The announcement follows a cross-school resolution demanding student representation on the Presidential Search Committee last month.

Members of the GSA elected student representatives from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences – Benjamin Schafer GRD ’27, Jamil Rahman GRD’ 27, Danielle Miyagishima MED ’25 and Jim Zhou GRD ’24 – to the Student Advisory Council. The GPSS elected Kamali Clora SPH ’24, Milton Gilder DIV ’25, Tyler Harvey SPH ’20 MED ’31 and  Nia Kamau JGA ’24. The YCC has also elected four undergraduate students to the SAC from among the 38 nominations it received. 

All members of the Student Advisory Council — including, ex officio, the presidents of the three student leadership organizations — had their first meeting on Monday; they planned weekly meetings, discussed how to coordinate listening sessions and divided responsibilities. 

GSA Chair Christopher Lindsay GRD ’23 GRD ’23 GRD ’26 explained that the organization began the process of selecting the four student representatives by requesting nominations from the entire student body of the Graduate School. The nine candidates who accepted their nominations submitted video statements and attended a meeting to answer questions from the Assembly members. The GSA then elected four students by holding a week of asynchronous voting.

GPSS President Chrishan Fernando GRD ’25 added that the GPSS had an open call for self-nominations from all professional school students. Similar to the election process at the GSA, 14 GPSS candidates were invited to submit statements and answer questions from senators during a GPSS Senate meeting. The four students were elected following an asynchronous voting process.

Schafer, who originally authored the resolution calling for student representation, wrote to the News that he hopes to accomplish three goals as a member of the SAC: to provide the Presidential Search Committee with a “holistic portrait” of student wants and concerns, to help the new president craft a vision for Yale that reflects student opinions and to ensure that the council becomes “a permanent seat” for students in the future presidential search processes.

“No concern is too negligible and no aspiration too insignificant, and we will treat [students’] visions for Yale with sincerity and without judgment,” Schafer wrote to the News. “We are the first generation of Yale students in the 322-year history of this institution to have the opportunity to make our voices heard in this process, and we hope [students] seize this historic moment with us.”

Schafer said that the students on the council are developing a campus-wide survey that will be distributed in the coming weeks and that he is interested in holding regular informal office hours with the council members so that students can engage more in the process. 

Rahman, a PhD candidate in finance, wrote to the News that the creation of the SAC marks a “unique” and “exciting” time at Yale.

He said that he hopes the SAC will present a wide variety of student opinions for the ongoing presidential search. 

“The sole purpose of the SAC is to gather and convey student opinions, so the importance of student dialogue can’t be overstated,” he said. “I hope that all students are open about their opinions, both on who the next president should look like and how the SAC is handling the process.”

In an email to the News, MD-PhD student Miyagishima wrote that her role as the founder of the first Global Shapers Hub in New Haven — a platform that connects young leaders to shape decision-making processes in their communities — gives her “insight and skills” needed to work with a diverse team and draw from “many perspectives” that can be found at Yale.

She wrote that she hopes to use her longstanding relationships across the University to assist the committee in obtaining “broad representation of the student body.”

“My main strategy will be to hold listening sessions, but notifying students and encouraging participation are the biggest barriers to any type of survey or focus group,” she said. “I feel that my broad involvement on campus over many years have allowed me to accrue knowledge about points of contact for different student groups and methods of communication as well as relationships with a number of administrators who I anticipate will be very helpful in reaching my target audience.”

Zhou, master’s student in Computer Science, wrote that he was “excited” by the community input received by the Yale Corporation’s listening sessions held earlier this semester. 

He added that he wants to “build on that momentum” to ensure that student voices are heard with two main goals. 

“Firstly, I am dedicated to ensuring that the next president embodies a strong commitment to the academic and research excellence that defines Yale,” he wrote to the News. “Secondly, I am determined to oversee a transparent and inclusive process that genuinely reflects the diverse perspectives of our student body.”

Like the graduate students, the professional students are also excited to bring new perspectives to the search. 

Harvey told the News that after being at Yale for a number of years as both a student at the School of Public Health and as a current student at the School of Medicine, he felt “compelled” to get involved in the presidential search process.

As a member of the SAC, Harvey said that he plans on ensuring that all student voices are considered in an equitable fashion that highlights the University’s diversity, “not just the voices of those with power and resources.”

“I feel like it’s really important to make sure that we get access to a diverse range of students and student voices,” he said. “Students often don’t fully understand what the hiring process is for these types of administrative positions … so something I’m hoping is really to build is the infrastructure of educating students on how we’re using their knowledge [and] how that is going to be present[ed] to the overall hiring committee.”

Gilder said that he nominated himself to the SAC out of curiosity for the presidential search process and also for what students want in the University’s next leader.

He especially plans on uplifting marginalized voices within the Yale community, including those of people of color, LGBTQ-identiyfing students and “differently-abled” individuals.

“There’s a lot of different stakeholders within this process,” Gilder said. “ It is a bit unfortunate that a student won’t necessarily be specifically on the committee itself for hiring, but I am glad that at the very least a solution has been created to engage student voices across the campus and then hopefully, the actual committee itself will be transparent about the process along the way.”

Clora said that he felt a responsibility to join the SAC given his “privileged position” as the Executive Director at the HAVEN Free Clinic, a student-run primary care clinic that provides free of charge care for uninsured adults in New Haven.

He added that he hopes to allow voices that might not have historically had a voice in Yale’s presidential search processes and that the work that the SAC will do now will serve as the foundation for students in future presidential searches.

“This transition beckons the call for various perspectives from different students who have different lived experiences within the University and different perspectives of their student experience here,” Clora said. “I think with my position, I had the responsibility and obligation to use the expansive connections that I have across these various colleges at Yale to gather those insights, anecdotes and testimonies from students.”

Kamau declined to comment for this piece.

The presidents of the YCC, GPSS and the GSA will serve as ex-officio members to the SAC.