Garrett Curtis, Contributing Photographer

In October 2022, Gia Cook ’26 submitted a Yale Safety Net request to fund travel home for her grandmother’s illness and funeral. She got a response to her inquiry only in February 2023.

Safety Net was launched in 2018 as a funding portal that covers medical and personal emergencies for high-need students on financial aid. It has since been expanded to consider more routine expenditures such as extracurricular fees, medical copays and travel costs. In the 2023-24 school year, over 1,000 — or about 60 percent — of requests were approved, according to the program’s website. 

However, FGLI student ambassadors highlighted inconsistencies with Safety Net grant processing, poor communication and the staff’s lack of understanding of FGLI student needs. 

“[The late funding] was obviously no help to the immediate situation,” Cook wrote to the News. “I think it’s unacceptable. It can feel so overwhelming and isolating being a low-income student on campus and not knowing if you will be able to return home (especially in cases of emergencies, like with my grandma).”

Inconsistencies and cutoffs

Though the three FGLI student ambassadors who spoke to the News have all had good experiences using Safety Net, students often ask them for help with requests that seem to have been arbitrarily denied. They have also noticed recent changes in Yale Safety Net’s granting process and have struggled to help students understand them. 

There is a lack of “standardization” among Safety Net request approvals, FGLI student ambassador Melangelo Pride ’26 said. Requests for laptop repairs and medical copays that would get consistently approved in the past are now getting denied. 

Several FGLI ambassadors speculated that the size of the team and its constant turnover are reasons for inconsistency. 

Financial aid officers seem to have varying definitions of what is covered by Safety Net, according to student ambassador Samad Hakani ’26, who is also director of affairs and a photography editor at the News. As a result, Hakani finds it difficult to help students as an ambassador because he does not know who is approving their requests and what guidelines they are using. 

“Even for me, I work for these people, and I still have no clue,” Hakani said, adding that the process is “very murky.”

FGLI student ambassadors also reported instances when officers would criticize some requests to fund flights and winter gear, saying that students should look for cheaper flights and clothes. Hakani said he finds the system “paternalistic.” 

The Undergraduate Financial Aid Office did not comment on how they enforce standardization on funding eligibility. 

FGLI ambassador Linh Pham ’25 added that changes to Safety Net have not been communicated effectively in the past. For example, last winter, financial aid officers told the FGLI student ambassadors that Safety Net would cap funding for medical emergencies at $5k per student for their entire time at Yale. This limit, Pham noted, did not appear on the Safety Net website for several months. 

Hakani finds the medical emergency cap “arbitrary” and too low. 

“Wisdom teeth surgery, if you don’t have insurance, can run up to $3,000 dollars. You need wisdom teeth surgery your freshman year, you have to go home for a funeral your sophomore year. Junior year, you’re out of luck,” Hakani said. “You can’t say, ‘Oh, you’re only allowed to have $5,000 worth of emergencies throughout your time at Yale.’”

FGLI anxieties

Amid uncertainties, students are left to advocate for themselves. Hakani has seen students have to “exaggerate” their circumstances in order to secure funding. Otherwise, students worry that financial aid officers might not see their situation as dire enough and might deny their requests. 

There is no option to appeal Safety Net denials. Instead, Hakani said, students often have to “spam” requests. The system seems to be “very broken,” he added.

Safety Net does not cover new devices but only repairs. Students are told to keep repairing old devices, but eventually those computers can become “broken beyond repair,” Hakani said. 

“Yale’s view of how FGLI students should live is living at the exact bare minimum,” Hakani said, “And anything more is considered a luxury.”

Because of this mindset, FGLI students at Yale cannot be “future thinking,” Hakani pointed out. After being denied Safety Net funding, some students have been told by financial aid officers to take out loans. 

Safety Net does not cover emergencies that occur over the summer. This restriction puts FGLI students in a bind, Hakani said. They have to choose between getting medical care over the summer, when it will not get funded, or over the school year when they’ll have to take time off. And that’s not even including time-sensitive procedures, Hakani emphasized. 

Hakani thinks that many arbitrary restrictions and policies result from not many people administering these programs and initiatives understanding the nuances of FGLI students’ needs. 

Moving forward

The FGLI community initiative was created in 2018 to spread awareness about resources available to FGLI students. The program is mostly “student-run,” Hakani said, and the student ambassadors have a weekly newsletter as well as office hours. 

Workshops and newsletters from the Office of Educational Opportunity, or OEO, are also aimed to ensure FGLI students are aware of the financial resources and guidance available to them. However, Hakani called for Yale to work harder to promote FGLI resources as an institution. 

Many students only find out about FGLI resources through word of mouth, student ambassadors told the News. Pride described an instance where a student had to pay for several months of medical copays out of pocket because they did not know they could get reimbursed by Safety Net.

Kari DiFonzo, director of undergraduate financial aid, wrote to the News about recent efforts to expand outreach and improve consistency for Safety Net, including a new informational series called “Fridays with Financial Aid.” The first webinar covered Safety Net details. Next Friday, officials from the financial aid office will be meeting with FGLI student ambassadors to discuss improvements and concerns about Safety Net.

DiFonzo also praised the recent improved efficiency of Safety Net request processing. In the 2023-24 school year, 89 percent of Safety Net requests were resolved within 5 days, compared to 46 percent in 2022-23.

“The people in charge are also human and mistakes happen all the time. But I also feel like owning up to those mistakes and sending a simple sorry is also important,” Pham wrote to the News, “It’s not a good situation anyone really wants to be in, honestly.”

Yale Safety Net is available for students whose parent share is less than $10k.