Editor’s note: Publius is a group of eight undergraduates who will write a joint weekly column about a topic relevant to campus discourse under the name Publius, with their individual names undersigned.
From November 2020 through October 2023, the Yale Daily News Editorial Board was a group of 10 to 16 Yale undergraduate students from diverse academic and personal backgrounds. We met approximately once a week to discuss and publish opinion pieces on topics of campus-wide importance. Our past topics include Yale graduates’ impact on the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, the value of shopping period, Yale’s role in New Haven’s budget crisis, union neutrality, the Yale Corporation, course registration, housing shortages, the seizure of student organization offices, affirmative action/legacy admissions and the search for a new Yale University president. We also annually endorsed candidates for the Yale College Council president and vice president.
In mid-October, some of the members of the YDN Managing Board of 2025 raised a sudden motion to abolish the Editorial Board without consulting or warning any voting member thereof. The Editorial Board began each of its pieces with an editor’s note explaining that “the Editorial Board is an independent body of the Yale Daily News, separate from the newsroom” and that “No members may be editors or writers for the News.” Even so, a small group of members on the Managing Board argued — allegedly based on feedback from readers and alumni — that the name “Yale Daily News Editorial Board” implied editors’ involvement or endorsement and that the semi-anonymous nature of Board opinions was inconsistent with YDN policy that opinions must be signed by individuals. A week later, with less than two days to consider the full set of available options and vote, most of the 61 members of the Managing Board voted to dissolve the Editorial Board, despite being offered the moderate alternative of renaming the board to reflect its separation from the News and its editors.
At the sole meeting discussing this issue, some members of the Managing Board expressed a lack of familiarity with the Editorial Board and raised concerns that we were “anonymous.” But a list of Editorial Board members had been published on the Yale Daily News website every year. We had not published the latest list at the time of this discussion, but we immediately provided it and invited the Managing Board to publish it. They did not.
Moreover, no one on the Managing Board reached out to anyone on the Editorial Board after the meeting to solicit any more information. By the time the Managing Board cast its vote, Google Docs tracking data showed that only 27 of its members — fewer than half of them — had read the letter that the Editorial Board co-presidents had written and shared in defense of the group. This was not a process conducted with the aim of resolving issues with the Editorial Board, whatever those may have been: its name, selection process or independence from the YDN. From our vantage point, the editors who led this charge seemed to have a desired outcome in mind and achieved it with clinical precision.
The Managing Board knew that published opinions represented the views of at least two-thirds of our body, and they knew that dissents represented those of a minority. However, no one could trace a specific piece to specific individuals. If someone disliked an opinion, they had to hold all of us accountable, instead of targeting just some of us. On a campus that is comfortable targeting students — and even putting them on national blast — for speaking up, this empowered us to be bold. The Yale Daily News was uncomfortable with that, which is pretty odd, considering that the pieces written by the editorial boards of many of the major news publications their alumni work for — like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post — are also unsigned.
The YDN created the Editorial Board so that it could “maintain journalistic integrity” and “expand who is included in the YDN’s institutional voice,” and that its pieces would provide a “jumping-off point for campus discourse” rather than a final say on any topic. This is why, whereas the editorial boards of other newspapers often include many career journalists and columnists, the YDN Editorial Board did not. That seems to have been the explicit intention of the Managing Board that established it just three years ago. These aims are no less important today than they were when the Editorial Board was created. It is a source of disdain for us that the News remains impetuous and dependably subject to the whims and fancies of the bureaucratic powers-that-be in a given year. Given its history of controversy, it comes with little surprise that the Managing Board is comfortable in its bumbling and bungling and occasional butchery.
Whereas other opinion pieces are often vituperative and written with a specific agenda, ours were unique in demonstrating how an extremely diverse group of students could reach a consensus on controversial topics. We could only publish with a two-thirds consensus, which meant our op-eds promoted not only the point of view of one person, but that of a group which negotiated, moderated its opinions and reflected on the quality of its argument. A minority of three or more members could publish — and have published — dissents. This structure enabled us to write more nuanced and convincing pieces. By arguing with each other, we found flaws in each other’s arguments and engaged with them before the readers did. Our goal has always been to spark balanced conversation and enhance discourse.
We offer this account both to explain what role we served, why we’ve been extinguished and reconstituted and to highlight the dangers of unchecked bureaucracy in the Yale Daily News. Members of the Managing Board with minimal experience editing or writing op-eds were persuaded by a small minority to abolish the only voice in the Yale Daily News that is independent from the newsroom and YDN politics, while actual writers are denied the opportunity to defend their work. We also draw attention to another major stumbling block of student journalism: students who conceal what we see as power trips behind hollow proclamations about journalistic ethics without treating us, those who write for them, respectfully.
Most of the YDN’s management did not hear balanced perspectives on either side of the issue before casting their vote. Fewer than half of the Managing Board’s members read our letter prior to voting, Google Docs history suggests. So it seems that many of those members voted based on a small group of editors’ uncontextualized assertions that the Editorial Board was dangerous, that it threatened campus trust in the Yale Daily News and that, given the Editorial Board’s independence from the newsroom, its members did not have the newsroom expertise or campus leadership experience to be on an Editorial Board. Perhaps there is no one better qualified than they are to mistake lack of status for lack of merit.
Our board wrote opinions to write opinions, not to climb the ladder of YDN politics. We are Communication and Consent Educators, varsity athletes, leaders of Yale’s largest public service organizations, stewards of local church communities, divestment activists and members from numerous Yale Political Union parties. Our members came from nine U.S. states and two foreign countries, and encompass majors from sociology to physics to history of science, medicine, and public health. We were an independent voice from the YDN, and that was the whole point — which went right over the heads of the Managing Board.
What are we doing moving forward? After weeks of deliberation and with the help of the Editor in Chief — who took it upon themselves to help us navigate this opaque, bureaucratic process — we have reconstituted ourselves as Publius, a deliberative, joint opinion column written by many of the former Editorial Board members. Our mission remains the same. However, we function with the key difference that these pieces will be publicly signed only by the members who support the opinion.
Our namesake, Publius Valerius Poplicola or Publicola, died 503 BC, was one of several Roman aristocrats who led the overthrow of the monarchy, spoke out in defense of the common people of Rome and became a Roman consul. In the Federalist Papers, a collection of 85 essays promoting the adoption of the United States Constitution, written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay in 1787–1788, the three statesmen used the alias “Publius” in honor of Poplicola’s role in establishing the Roman Republic. The Federalist Papers were addressed “to the people of the state of New York.” We address our pieces “to the Yale community.”
We will keep on writing. Your continued readership will help support our work, will vindicate our efforts at sparking reasonable discourse and will prove to the majority of the Managing Board who voted for our dissolution that we cannot be silenced. We hope you will also help us engage with advocacy in communities we might not be a part of. You can contact any of us to raise issues that would benefit from our dialogue.
Publius currently has a few open positions for writers, and we’d love to welcome you aboard. More information about joining Publius will become available soon. No experience is needed; We are just looking for passionate, open-minded students who care about promoting diverse perspectives at Yale and who are interested in writing weekly op-eds. There will forever be a need for thoughtful dialogue and debate. No obstacle, no institutional vendetta and no intimidation can stop our pursuit of that. We hope you’ll consider joining us.
This piece was written by a two-thirds majority of Publius. Members of the body include:
Leadership
Alex Bavalsky, Co-President, Timothy Dwight ’25
Brooklyn, NY
Members
Violet Barnett, Grace Hopper ’25
Miami, FL
Justin Crosby, Silliman ’25
Middleton, MA
Josephine Cureton, Ezra Stiles ’24
San Francisco, CA
Hannah Figueroa Velazquez, Berkeley ’26
Portland, OR
Edos Herwegh Vonk, Davenport ’26
London, United Kingdom
Jack Maketa, Saybrook ’26
Perkasie, PA
Adam Tufts, Berkeley ’26
Livermore, CA