Ximena Solorzano, Contributing Photographer

The Yale College Council will administer a referendum on institutional divestment from military weapons manufacturing and investment in Palestinian scholarship after Thanksgiving break.

The referendum will include three separate questions written by the pro-Palestine Sumud Coalition. The first two ask whether Yale should disclose and divest from its holdings in military weapons manufacturers, “including those arming Israel,” and the third asks whether Yale should “act on its commitment to education by investing in Palestinian scholars and students.” 

Per YCC President Mimi Papathanasopoulos ’26 and Vice President Esha Garg ’26, students will be able to provide statements for and against each ballot measure to the YCC via a Google Form starting today. The YCC will then synthesize these statements and include the main points for and against each question on the final referendum. 

The referendum will take place over a 96-hour voting window from Wednesday, Dec. 4, to Sunday, Dec. 8.

“The referendum is a really important way to demonstrate popular support for divestment from military weapons and investment in Palestinian studies, and it’s also an educational tool that will draw attention both on and beyond campus to the genocide in Gaza and to Yale’s complicity,” Arjun Warrior ’26, an organizer with the Sumud Coalition, told the News. 

The referendum comes after the Yale Corporation announced that, following a year-long review of Yale’s investments, it would not divest from military weapons manufacturers in April 2024. Warrior added that the Sumud Coalition has previously negotiated divestment policy with the Yale Board of Trustees and that, if passed, the referendum would “strengthen that negotiating position” and pressure administrators to update Yale policies in line with student demands. 

The path to 20 percent

The pro-Palestine Sumud Coalition first registered a petition for the referendum with YCC on Oct. 31 and began to collect signatures with a rally on Nov. 6. The petition obtained 1,000 undergraduate signatures — roughly 15 percent of the Yale College student body — in its first 48 hours of circulation, sending the petition to referendum to a simple majority vote in the YCC Senate. 

By early Sunday morning, the petition had garnered signatures from over 1,500 students, or roughly 22 percent of the student body. Per the YCC constitution, gaining signatures from more than 20 of the student body granted the Sumud Coalition the power to repeal the Senate’s decision, so the YCC vote during its weekly meeting on Sunday afternoon was ultimately a formality. 

The YCC Senate vote, conducted anonymously, approved the referendum with 17 “yes” votes, 7 “no” votes and 4 abstentions. 

“The YCC’s symbolic yes vote today affirms the petition’s overwhelmingly positive reception amongst the Yale College student body: the petition was so popular that the referendum would have proceeded with or without the YCC’s approval,” Sovy Pham ’26, YCC senator for Saybrook College, wrote to the News.

Per Papathanasopoulos, the YCC will make sure the referendum is “well-advertised” but will remain “a neutral facilitator” in the process. Garg added that “coercion” in the voting process is prohibited by the YCC constitution and pointed to a clause allowing students to report instances of coercion to the communications director. 

Per the YCC constitution‬‭, if 50 percent or more of respondents vote “yes” and the total number of respondents who voted “yes” amounts to at least one third of the undergraduate student body, the YCC will send an official letter to the University President “expressing the sentiments of the‬‭ student body” and “[requesting] an official response” from the President.  

After the Sumud Coalition first announced its petition for the divestment referendum, Eytan Israel ’26 and Hadi Mahdeyan ’26 released an open-letter and launched a counter-petition urging Yale to continue investing in military weapon manufacturers “that protect the U.S., Ukraine, Israel, and other allies.” As of Sunday night, the petition has received 200 signatures from Yale students, alumni, parents and faculty members.

The vote ignites the debate at YCC

At the YCC’s Sunday meeting, Pham and an organizer with the Sumud Coalition presented in favor of the referendum.

They explained that one of the coalition’s goals was to reframe the public perception of the pro-Palestinian and pro-divestment movement on campus. The referendum would change the depiction of the issue from “Zionist vs. anti-Zionists,” “Muslims & Arabs vs. Jews” and “Left vs. Right” to “Yale + New Haven communities vs. the trustees and provost” in a way that portrayed the movement as “Big us, small them,” per the presenters’ slideshow. In this way, the presenters claimed, the referendum would unify the campus and surrounding New Haven communities.

At the meeting, two senators shared concerns about the language of the referendum, specifically the addition of the phrase “including those arming Israel” in the first two questions. 

William Barbee ’26, YCC senator for Silliman College, felt this phrasing was redundant, as “divestment from all weapons manufacturers” would include those supporting Israel. Barbee said that this phrasing was contradictory to what the presenters of the referendum had stated was one of their goals by specifically invoking the war in Gaza, a divisive topic on Yale’s campus. 

“I wonder, if the goal is unity, why each of the proposed questions includes something specifically targeting arming Israel,” Barbee said. “If a message of unity is really something that you’re going for, it should be much broader: ‘Yale should disclose its investments, full stop.’” 

Another YCC senator, whom the News could not identify, said at the meeting that the phrase “including those arming Israel” was misleading, as it implied there would be a way for Yale to divest from weapons manufacturers arming Israel only. The reality, he said, is that Yale would have to divest from all weapons manufacturers, including those arming Ukraine, Taiwan, the United Kingdom and other nations. 

Less than 0.006 percent of Yale’s $41.4 billion endowment is made publicly available through its quarterly SEC filings, as of November.