From the New York Times:

Princeton got rid of undergraduate loans four years ago, and today its students on aid graduate with a mere $400 of debt. Harvard no longer asks low-income parents to pay anything, and its application pool broke records this year. But at Yale, students have been waiting, to little avail, for something similarly dramatic to happen. Yesterday their patience ran out. From morning to night, dozens of students protested in and around the university’s admissions office, prompting the staff to lock its doors in the face of some confused parents who had brought their children to tour the campus. “At $40,000 a year, how do you afford to send two kids to college at the same time?” said Stanley Weindorf from Roslyn, on Long Island, who had come with his wife and two children to see the university. They promptly headed back to the car and up the road, to visit Wesleyan. The student protesters, perhaps 150 in all, said they merely wanted Yale to do what so many of its rivals have already done: scale back, and perhaps even eliminate, the amount that low- and middle-income students have to pay. At a time when college costs are steadily rising, the University of North Carolina and the University of Virginia seem to be racing each other to eliminate loans for larger and larger slices of the low-income population. Rice has started to follow suit, while Brown has eliminated work-study for freshmen and replaced it with scholarships. “We expect Yale to be a leader on this, not behind everyone else,” said Julia C. Gonzales, 21, a senior from Texas.

The protest came less than two days after Yale’s president, Richard C. Levin, told an audience of students that he was, in fact, just a few weeks away from making “some serious moves” on the financial aid front, precisely because so many of the university’s competitors already had, The Yale Daily News reported. “We don’t want to be left behind,” Mr. Levin told the crowd on Tuesday, making a sit-in seem like a waste of energy to some university officials. Mr. Levin’s meeting with students appeared to end so inconclusively that many were just as angry as they had been beforehand, if not more so. In letters to The Yale Daily News yesterday, one student accused Mr. Levin of showing the “utmost of condescension” toward students on financial aid. Another said Mr. Levin had “matter-of-factly dismissed the hundreds of students” who could barely pay tuition. Yale’s undergraduate applications dropped by 1.2 percent for the 2004-05 school year, a notable exception to the double-digit increases experienced by many other Ivy League institutions. Yale officials said the decrease was “insignificant,” reflecting nothing more than market fluctuations. Harvard and Princeton, by contrast, experienced 15 and 20 percent increases respectively in applications for this year, and both credited additional financial aid as a major reason for the increase.

Just got out of the Admissions Office a couple hours ago after being arrested after the nine-hour sit in. More later.

Students respond to the YDN’s coverage of Tuesday’s forum:

So far as I can tell, President Levin “stated” no “plan” to reform financial aid at last night’s forum (“Levin states plan to alter financial aid,” 2/23). Instead, he misrepresented both the YCC resolution and the Undergraduate Organizing Committee platform, despite, with the case of the UOC platform, having four months to study the document and as many invitations to discuss it with students. He asked us for our input about financial aid when, in fact, the UOC platform was already compiled out of the input of more than 300 students. And he left 40 minutes early, not even staying to hear the input he sought. We’re not seeking a discussion based on the false dichotomy between the self-help and family contributions; we’re seeking reform — over 1,100 students have signed on to a platform for reform to both the self-help and family contributions — and we’re seeking it now. Levin attended last night’s forum with little understanding of financial aid at Yale and even less respect for those of us who are on it. As students, we demand more, and we won’t stop fighting until we get it.
Phoebe Rounds ’07

…Was the reporter even at the open forum Tuesday night? The headline you ran on Wednesday morning, “Levin states plan to alter financial aid” is a terrible misrepresentation of what actually happened. President Levin offered absolutely no concrete plan to alter financial aid. Instead, he simply shrugged off the students who were asking him to hear their stories, saying “I imagine that’s only 200 students or so.” He then walked out 40 minutes ahead of schedule, refusing to address any more questions.

Three-quarters of the article that accompanied that outrageous headline were devoted to Levin’s comments, and only a few short lines even mentioned student opinion. Your article also failed to mention the numerous times Levin was corrected about falsely representing Yale’s financial aid policy and the UOC and YCC platforms. This was despite the overwhelming dissatisfaction in the room.

I am not a member of the UOC, nor am I on financial aid. I am a concerned student who is deeply disappointed that you chose to depict the event in this manner, because it is simply factually inaccurate. It is insulting to everyone who attended the forum, and it is irresponsible to have given this fairy tale to the Yale community. Save your spin for the opinion page, and if you wish to call yourself a newspaper, please rebuke whoever was responsible for this unacceptable blunder.

Christopher Rhie ’07…

…I was dismayed to see the Yale Daily News so dramatically misrepresent the atmosphere of Tuesday night’s financial aid forum given by President Levin, which many students left feeling angry and as if they had not been listened to.

For Levin to call students’ personal stories of, to name a few, having to work 20 hours a week or of undergoing hormone therapy to earn money “private matters” was both misguided and untrue. It is not a private matter; it is an issue that must be talked about in terms of ensuring that the best and brightest can come here, no matter their background. Even if the amount of people who must work 15-20 hours a week is “only,” as Levin chose to word it yesterday, 200 students, that is 200 students too many. We must ask ourselves, are students able to take advantage of the same opportunities offered by Yale, regardless of their personal financial circumstances? The answer is clearly no. It was the utmost of condescension for Levin to suggest that we choose to ease either the burden on ourselves or our parents, when both measures are desperately needed.

During his brief appearance, Levin demonstrated a profound lack of understanding of the difficulties many Yale students face, which is as almost as disappointing as his lackluster commitment to opening a true dialogue with students on necessary financial aid reforms. He needs to put Yale’s money where his mouth is and not dangle it in front of us as an “either/or” proposition.

Christine Slaughter ’07

…As a student who attended Tuesday night’s open forum with President Levin, I was greatly disappointed with the News’ coverage. Absent from the article were the student testimonies about how Yale’s flawed system of calculating financial aid forces many students to work more than 20 hours per week. Absent from the article was the way in which President Levin matter-of-factly dismissed the hundreds of students who can barely meet their tuition requirements. Absent from the article was the way in which President Levin did not know basic facts about financial aid packages for a meeting he had months to prepare. In other words, the article failed to truly capture what happened at the meeting.

Tuesday night’s open forum came about through student demands for changes in Yale’s system for calculating financial aid. It is time that the administration recognizes that what it heard last night was proof of structural problems in its calculations for financial aid. As a leader in the academic world, Yale must go beyond “opportunity cost” analyses and do what it knows is right. As the administration prepares to make changes to its current system of financial aid, I hope it keeps in mind the message it tells all of its prospective students: Money should never prevent a student from choosing to come to Yale.

Christopher Oropeza ’05

Talk about defining deviancy down:

President Bush earlier this month dispatched top White House official Frances Fragos Townsend to head an official U.S. delegation attending an “anti-terrorism” conference in Saudi Arabia — a conference that aired vile anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist canards. Saudi Cleric Aed Al-Qarni noted at the conference that “The first to kill and use terrorism in the world were the Jews,” according to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI); the cleric went on to describe September 11th as “an American terror attack.” According to White House press secretary Scott McClellan, President Bush spoke with Saudi Crown Prince Abdallah on February 14th and “complimented the Crown Prince on last week’s successful counter-terrorism conference in Saudi Arabia.”

In addition to the American delegation led by Townsend, who serves as President Bush’s Homeland Security Advisor with the rank of Assistant to the President, the conference included participation from nations including Iran, Syria and Sudan — all state sponsors of terrorism, according to the Department of State. Senator Frank Lautenberg (NJ) first warned President Bush to avoid the conference in a February 4th letter to Bush. Throughout and surrounding the conference, various Saudi clerics noted that “Jews and the Christians are Allah’s enemies,” and that Jihad — including attacks by insurgents in Iraq — is appropriate. In a poem read before Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan, it was noted that Osama bin Laden “was sent by the Jews.”

Just remember, it’s only antisemitism when it comes from the left.

Everyone who’s in town should be there tonight for the Open Forum with President Levin from 8 to 10 PM tonight in Sudler Hall (WLH). The second hour is devoted to questions from the floor on financial aid reform. After months of refusing to come to the table to discuss a platform for substantive change backed by over a thousand students, tonight is a chance for Levin to demonstrate any recognition of the seriousness of the problem and to answer direct questions about how our policy can better reflect our values. Here’s hoping.

Something to keep in mind next time you hear more claptrap about a “mandate” or “electability”:

American want Democrats to stand up to Bush,” the Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire reports. “Fully 60%, including one-fourth of Republicans, say Democrats in Congress should make sure Bush and his party ‘don’t go too far.’ Just 34% want Democrats to ‘work in a bipartisan way’ to help pass the president’s priorities.”

The campaign against Iraqi trade unionists continues:

Another Iraqi trade unionist kidnapped: MOAID HAMED (General Secretary, IFTU Mosul Branch). The Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) reports that Mr. Moaid Hamed, General Secretary of the IFTU Mosul Branch, has been kidnapped on 11 February 2005 in Mosul. On 11 February 2005, Mr Moaid Hamed was leaving his home in Mosul on union business when gunmen attacked him and kidnapped him, taking him to an unknown location. In a previous incident, terrorists and Saddam’s loyalists working together had kidnapped Saady Edan, the president of the IFTU in Mosul on 26 January and held him prisoner for a week in a unknown location where he was tortured severely and before his release on 1 February 2005 was told to stop working and organizing for the IFTU otherwise he would be killed next. The IFTU office in Mosul received many threats and intimidation from forces loyal to Saddam and his yellow union the discredited GFTU. The IFTU media and information office calls upon the international labour movement to demand the immediate release of Mr Moaid Hamed.

These folks continue to face difficult challenges on all sides.

The Hartford Courant on yesterday’s protest in the Betts House:

More than 100 Yale graduate student teachers marched to the university president’s office Thursday to protest the university’s treatment of women and minorities. Even after the graduate students were told that President Richard Levin was not in his office, they remained in the building and speakers took the floor to air their grievances. The march, organized by the Graduate Employees and Student Organization, was prompted, they said, by Levin’s failure to join other university leaders who have denounced remarks made by Harvard University President Lawrence Summers at a conference last month…Officials for the graduate student organization Thursday called for Levin to weigh in on the issue and charged that his silence reflects Yale’s treatment of women. They noted that there is only one black female faculty member with tenure at Yale and that the university has no female faculty members with tenure in the math department. Less than 20 percent of the university’s tenured staff are women and one of 25 tenured faculty members are black or Hispanic. Besides the scarcity of tenured positions filled by women, many speakers complained that the university’s lack of affordable day care and dependent health care insurance make it nearly impossible to raise a family. Amanda Izzo, a doctoral candidate in the American studies department, said that university officials pay “lip service” to the ideals of diversity, but do little to achieve them. “The more time I spend at this university, the less integrity I see,” she said.

Meanwhile, Levin tries to shoot the messenger:

“GESO has over the years moved around from issue to issue, and their platform has changed dramatically over the years, but their major focus is getting recognized as a union,” Levin said.

GESO has spent a decade fighting for the right of graduate student employees to organize for equal opportunity and against casualization. What Levin and others refuse to recognize is that the right to organize and better working conditions are not competing goals – rather, one is the only way to permanently secure the other.

Israel takes a step away from collective punishment:

Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz yesterday ended the policy of demolishing houses belonging to terrorists’ families. The move came after recommendations made by a military committee appointed by Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Moshe Ya’alon to examine the policy of house demolitions. The interim conclusions of the committee were presented last week to Ya’alon, who asked for some more information for the final draft. Mofaz ruled that he will also put on hold the army’s prerogative to use home demolitions as a warning to terrorists. He said, however, that should circumstances change dramatically, it is possible that Israel would reconsider its policy on house demolitions. Human rights group B’Tselem said that since the outbreak of a Palestinian intifada in September 2000, the IDF forces has razed or dynamited 675 dwellings in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, leaving 4,239 people homeless.