NEWS

University fundraising spiked during the pandemic, but a dip may be coming

BY EVAN GORELICK STAFF REPORTER

Yale benefited from unprecedented rates of monetary donation during the COVID-19 pandemic. But because of recent market downturns, fundraising may soon decline from this elevated level.

Yale launched its five-year “For Humanity” capital campaign on October 2, 2021, in the throes of a global pandemic. The campaign, which focuses on science priorities outlined in the University’s 2016 Science Strategy Committee Report, was originally scheduled to enter its public phase in April 2021 but was suspended because of COVID-19.

After a half-year delay, Yale began the campaign virtually, making it the University’s first fundraising campaign to launch online. Events that would have been held on campus before the pandemic were held remotely, and alumni, parents and benefactors could watch live from anywhere in the world.

“The two years we [fundraised] on Zoom were the best two years of fundraising in the University’s history,” University President Peter Salovey told the News. “We raised more money in new commitments and pledges than ever before. I think COVID gave people the chance to think about their priorities, to think about the For Humanity campaign, how Yale can improve the world in so many different ways through its scholarship and its educational missions.”

According to the most recent campaign report, released Tuesday, Yale received $905.7 million in commitments and a record $914.6 million cash for 2022. Last year, Yale received a record $1.18 billion in commitments and $738.5 million cash.

The University hopes to reach $7 billion before the campaign ends on June 30, 2026. Now, in just the second year of its public phase, the campaign is already 60 percent of the way there.

The University’s Office of Development told the News that virtual programming during the pandemic allowed more people than ever to engage with the campaign.

“One of the biggest differences between this campaign and the last is that [For Humanity] is inclusive of more people because we can communicate in person and digitally,” Associate Vice President for Development and Campaign Director Eugenie Gentry said. “We can now maintain a higher level of engagement with a broader group of alumni.”

The campaign’s largest virtual program, which drew over 6,000 registrants, was its launch event in October 2021. According to the Development Office, an in-person launch event — the pre-pandemic norm — could have accommodated only 600 to 700 people.

Because planning for the campaign began as early as 2018, the University had to adapt when the pandemic hit in spring 2021. Instead of on-campus gatherings and face-to-face fundraising, the University planned webinars and virtual social events.

On the fundraising end, the higher volume of engagement opportunities has made it easier for Yale to connect with potential donors. Gentry told the News that the pandemic has “changed the landscape of philanthropy.” Though they “can’t fully replace” in-person events, virtual events are not going away any time soon.

Beyond the increased reach of a virtual campaign, Yale has benefitted from pandemic-driven research visibility in public health and medicine.

“We saw an increase in gifts in the medical and public health areas, in large part because donors could see the impact of [Yale’s] research that supports those issues,” Gentry said.

The campaign has also seen increased gifts for financial aid and emergency funds, which Gentry said is likely a result of public health conditions, too. Though Yale benefited from many campaign-specific changes, it also rode the favorable macroeconomic tides that prevailed during the pandemic.

Gentry told the News that there is a “strong correlation between the health of the market and giving.”

When markets are doing well, Yale tends to see increased fundraising, and when markets are declining, donations usually slow down. When the Great Recession hit in 2008, for example, Yale saw “huge decreases” in both endowment and fundraising performance.

“Giving increases when donors feel wealthier,” School of Management professor Jacob Thomas said, “assuming that donors hold their wealth in assets that do well when the market is up, giving must also rise when campaigns are ongoing.”

School of Management professor James Choi agreed with Thomas, adding simply that “people can give more money when they have more money.”

Though the pandemic began a two-year bull market in March 2020, it peaked at the end of 2021 and has been declining to pre-pandemic levels ever since.

This year, the University’s endowment saw its slowest year of growth since 2009, largely in response to market downturns that tanked college endowments nationwide. In fact, Yale’s 0.8 percent return on its investment holdings was the only positive result in the Ivy League during the 2022 fiscal year.

The University has not yet seen a drop-off in fundraising performance as it has endowment performance. But fundraising rates may soon fall.

Thomas and Choi said that the time-horizon of donors’ monetary commitments could cause a delay between market and fundraising trends. After donors commit to a future gift, it may be difficult to renege when markets dip.

“I imagine [there is a delay] because major gifts occur after a series of conversations that take place over an extended period of time,” Choi wrote in an email to the News. “So, by the time somebody is on the brink of making a gift, the giving decision has a lot of momentum behind it that won’t be

LUKAS FLIPPO/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

New virtual programming and favorable markets drove Yale to its strongest two years of fundraising ever. But changing market tides may soon reverse pandemic trends.

derailed by a market downturn that has just occurred.”

Economics professor and Nobel laureate Robert Shiller provided an alternative explanation for the rise in fundraising, pointing to recent pushback against legacy admissions.

Though Shiller said that “as usual, we cannot provide a decisive explanation for human behavior in speculative markets,” he pointed out that legacy admissions preferences have recently come under fire at Yale and around the country.

Alumni, many of whom have an interest in maintaining legacy favor for their children, may be giving more so that Yale has a stronger financial incentive to preserve the practice and keep donors happy.

In September 2021, history professor Beverly Gage resigned as director of Yale’s Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy due to pressure from donors to control the program’s curriculum. In the wake of Gage’s resignation, faculty voiced support for her decision and raised concerns about the influence donors have over academic freedom at Yale.

In February 2022, Dean of Admission and Financial Aid Jeremiah Quinlan testified in favor of legacy admissions practices before the Connecticut General Assembly after state lawmakers proposed a bill that would end the practice.

According to sociologist Jerome Karabel, Yale and other elite universities began using legacy admissions in the 1920s to keep out “social undesirables,” especially Jewish people, at a time when immigration to the United States was sharply increasing.

In 2014, Students for Fair Admissions brought two lawsuits to the Supreme Court, alleging that the race-conscious admissions policies of Harvard University and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill are discriminatory.

During hearings, the plaintiffs also questioned the legality of donor and legacy admissions practices. As Supreme Court decisions loom, these policies have received increasing public scrutiny.

For each remaining year of the capital campaign, Yale will hold events in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and London as part of its “For Humanity Illuminated” event series.

Contact EVAN GORELICK at evan.gorelick@yale.edu .

With LSAT in limbo, Yale Law students divided on test’s merits

TIM TAI/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

In February, the American Bar Association will vote on whether or not to continue their LSAT requirement for law school accreditation.

BY INES CHOMNALEZ STAFF REPORTER

Law schools across the country may soon stop requiring the LSAT for admissions, pending a decision by the American Bar Association.

The policy change, which would go into effect in the fall of 2025, would strike the requirement that law schools use the test to receive accreditation. Yale Law School has not indicated whether it would continue to require the LSAT in the absence of a mandate.

An arm of the ABA voted to strike the mandate earlier this month, with the final decision going before the ABA House of Delegates in February.

“Requiring LSAT scores appeared to be a somewhat artificial requirement, not clearly linked to whether candidates for law school should be lawyers or will provide competent representation to their clients,” wrote Michael Downey, a member of the ABA Task Force for the Future of Legal Education.

The Law School press office declined to comment on the pending vote. Yale Law School Dean Heather Gerken had previously cited concerns with the test and other numerical standards in her decision to withdraw Yale from the U.S. News and World Report’s ranking system.

“Today, 20 percent of a law school’s overall ranking is median LSAT/GRE scores and GPAs,” Gerken wrote. “While academic scores are an important tool, they don’t always capture the full measure of an applicant. This heavily weighted metric imposes tremendous pressure on schools to overlook promising students, especially those who cannot afford expensive test preparation courses.”

Yale Law School currently boasts the country’s highest median LSAT score in a three-way tie with Harvard and Columbia.

Some Yale students voiced concerns about axing the requirement, claiming that the LSAT was one of the most meritocratic aspects of the admissions process. Others heralded the decision.

For Olivia Campbell LAW ’23, the absence of an LSAT requirement would give greater weight to other factors that are even more prone to inequity. Free or cheap online resources for LSAT preparation are highly accessible to many students, she explained, while interview experience, resumes, internships and recommendation letters are often more difficult for low-income students to obtain.

“I didn’t go to a fancy private high school, nor did I attend an Ivy League undergraduate institution. I didn’t have a law school application coach,” Campbell wrote to the News. “But I did score in the 99th percentile on the LSAT, all thanks to some free online courses and a couple of books I bought from Barnes and Noble.”

In fact, she believes that her admission to YLS would have been “highly unlikely” without the help of a high LSAT score.

Campbell and other students took to the Wall, a physical forum for student debate inside the Sterling Law Building, to voice disagreement with Gerken’s characterization of the LSAT.

“I disagree with Dean Gerken’s statements suggesting that current admissions practices weigh the LSAT too heavily,” Campbell wrote in an email to the News. “It is probably true that compared to wealthy students, low-income students are disadvantaged in nearly every aspect of the admissions process. But the LSAT is one of the least-inequitable admissions factors.”

Jake McDonald LAW ’25 was similarly emphatic about the equalizing capacity of the LSAT. McDonald, who graduated from a state school, described the LSAT as “easily the most egalitarian” component of the admissions process.

McDonald described the discrepancy between institutional support provided at private — and especially Ivy League — institutions as opposed to public state schools. When he approached career advisers at his university about law school, he said he knew the system was tailored for students targeting “different schools” than he was.

“In a lot of ways, the LSAT was about providing an opportunity and an equal playing field.” McDonald said. “I knew, even though I maybe didn’t get the benefits that were conferred by some of the higher institutions, if I showed up on test day, and did what I needed to do that I could then really stack up against anybody else.”

Not all students agree on this point. Chisato Kimura LAW ’25, a recipient of this year’s Hurst Horizon scholarship, described standardized testing as “incredibly classist” in an email to the News.

“The LSAT especially requires people to master new skills and ways of thinking and that consumes time and money,” Kimura wrote. “A de-emphasis on the LSAT for law school admissions would hopefully mean that there are more holistic admissions decisions that would add greater weight to people’s lived experiences, their essays, and other components of their application.”

Both Campbell and McDonald said that it would be a mistake for Yale Law School to stop requiring the LSAT. Campbell specifically highlighted US News’ use of median rather than mean LSAT scores in formulating its ranking, pointing out that this metric allows law school admissions committees to save 49 percent of its spots for students scoring below a desirable class median.

McDonald described Yale Law School administration’s choice to exit the rankings as a trend of “wanting to go from objective to subjective” in law school admissions. By his estimation, this trend ultimately hurts the people it aims to protect.

“I think that it’s a bad way to approach law school admissions, and I think it’s going to lead to harmful results when it comes to screwing non-elite people out of elite admissions,” McDonald said. “I think that’s my concern: that someone like me is going to slip through the cracks a lot more easily than in the previous system that was there.”

According to a study conducted by the Law School Admissions Council, the LSAT is the best-predictor for academic success in law schools. Compared to undergraduate admissions, where high school GPA has been demonstrated to be more predictive of undergraduate success than the ACT or SAT, the LSAT has been established as a more accurate predictor of success than undergraduate GPA.

Performance data, however, demonstrates significant score discrepancies across gender and racial lines. According to a report published by the Law School Admissions Council, female test takers consistently scored approximately two points lower on average compared to their male counterparts on the LSAT from 2011-2018. During the same period, white and Asian test takers scored averages around 152/153 as opposed to averages around 141 for Black and African American test takers and 145/146 for Latinx test takers. Downey, who works for the ABA, described the LSAT requirement as just one of many “unnecessary and dubious regulations” in the field of legal education. He pointed out the lack of remote or online alternatives to conventional legal education as well as the fact that American legal degrees can only be earned in post-graduate study as barriers, especially contrasted against European standards.

Downey indicated that getting rid of the LSAT had the potential to increase diversity in the legal profession, where he described diversity as “severely lacking.” However, he also highlighted the importance of making sure that admitted students were well prepared to pass the bar exam.

“It would be a further failure of the legal system if we allow law schools to remove the LSAT requirement to maintain (or increase) student enrollment, but then — after spending the time and financial resources of completing legal students — students struggle to pass the bar, obtain admission, and actually practice law,” Downey wrote.

The LSAT was first administered in 1948.

NEWS

Law School clinic sues Department of Veterans A airs for discrimination

SADIE BOGRAD/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

The clinic is representing Conley Monk Jr., a Black marine who was denied veterans’ benefits.

BY SADIE BOGRAD STAFF REPORTER

When Elm City resident Conley Monk Jr., returned from the Vietnam War, he expected to receive support from the Veterans’ Administration — now known as the Department of Veterans A airs, or VA.

Instead, he became one of the thousands of Black veterans to be denied benefi ts by the VA.

Monk announced that he is suing the VA for negligence at a press conference at the Dixwell Community Center on Oct. 28. The press conference included words by Monk’s legal representation — The Veterans Legal Services Clinic at Yale Law School, or VLSC — Senator Richard Blumenthal LAW ’73 and the nationwide nonprofi t Black Veterans Project.

“Since our nation’s founding, our government has relied on Black Americans to win its wars,” said Richard Brookshire, the executive director of the Black Veterans Project. “Yet for decades, it has allowed racially discriminatory practices to obstruct Black veterans from equally accessing veterans’ housing, education and healthcare benefi ts.”

Monk is seeking compensatory damages for the VA’s negligence. He has separately submitted an administrative claim on behalf of his father, a World War II veteran who was also denied benefi ts.

The lawsuit alleges that racial bias in the military justice system made Black service members less likely to receive honorable discharges, which in turn a ected their eligibility for VA benefi ts.

In 2021, the VA provided records of disability compensation claims in response to Freedom of Information Act requests from the National Veterans Council for Legal Redress, which Monk co-founded and directs and the Black Veterans Project. The records the VA disclosed reveal that there are statistically signifi cant racial disparities in the outcomes of veterans’ benefi t claims.

Between 2001 and 2020, for example, the VA on average denied 29.5 percent of Black veterans’ requests for disability compensation, compared to 24.2 percent of white veterans’ requests.

The lawsuit accuses the VA of negligence, stating that although the VA knew or should have known about these disparities, they did not address them. As evidence of this disparity’s widespread recognition, it points out that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission prevents employers from requiring applicants to have honorable discharges because of pervasive discrimination in the discharge system.

“For decades, there have been anecdotal reports and widespread suspicion of racial discrimination in the VA benefits programs,” said Adam Henderson LAW ’23, an intern at the VLSC. “The VA has denied countless meritorious applications of Black veterans and thus deprived them and their families of the support that they are entitled to.”

Monk is one such veteran. After serving in Vietnam in 1969, Monk began to experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. He received an undesirable discharge, now known as a discharge “under other than honorable” conditions,” in 1970 after an altercation caused by his PTSD-induced hypervigilance.

When the VA conducted a Character of Discharge determination, they failed to consider the circumstances surrounding Monk’s discharge and declared him ineligible for education and housing benefi ts, leaving Monk temporarily homeless. The VA also denied Monk disability benefi ts for PTSD, and later for diabetes.

The department repeatedly declined to conduct a new Character of Discharge determination, even after Monk received a formal PTSD diagnosis. It was not until 2015, after an appeal in which Monk was represented by the VLSC, that Monk began to receive disability compensation, and only in 2020 did the VA recognize that Monk should have been eligible for benefi ts since his initial application for compensation in 1971.

Henderson described the two claims as evidence of “the generational harm that the VA has caused.”

The speakers expressed their hope that Conley’s lawsuit sets a precedent for other Black veterans to also seek out compensation.

“My lawsuit is also going to lead the charge for other veterans,” Monk said. “We are hoping and praying that we are successful in our fi ght because it’s not only for me and my father, it’s for thousands of other veterans that are undergoing the same type of situation.”

The lawsuit also alleges that even after Monk received some benefi ts, they were insu cient and did not address “the unique harm Mr. Monk su ered due to VA’s pattern of racial discrimination.”

Blumenthal said that regardless of whether the lawsuit is successful, it will call attention to the VA’s practices and encourage the department to reexamine the discharge and benefits system.

“At the very least, the VA and the Department of Defense are going to have to look at themselves in the mirror and say, ‘What is the reason for these disparate outcomes?’” Blumenthal said. “What we need to do is examine the whole system: the less than honorable discharge system, bad paper discharge, general discharge. These kinds of labels can stigmatize a veteran and stain his chances for success throughout life, not just with the VA, but throughout professional and personal life.”

Monk is suing under the Federal Tort Claims Act, which was enacted in 1946.

Contact SADIE BOGRAD at sadie.bograd@yale.edu .

Yale College pushes for geographic diversity

BY ANIKA SETH, TRISTAN HERNANDEZ AND HANNAH KURCZESKI STAFF REPORTER AND CONTRIBUTING REPORTERS

When Lianna Byler ’24 first arrived at Yale, she had never taken an Uber or ordered any kind of food delivery.

Byler is from Hartstown, Pennsylvania — which, per the 2010 census, stood at a population just over 200. She told the News that coming to Yale marks the first time many rural students encounter such services, which are childhood staples for many of their urban or suburban peers. The same goes for public transport, from the Metro North to the Amtrak to airports, Byler said.

In line with these varied experiences, the University has worked over the past six years to increase emphasis on recruiting, enrolling and supporting students from rural and small-town areas.

“Geographic diversity is a complex topic, but one way to think of it is not just admitting students from all 50 states, but from diverse communities within and across those states,” associate director of undergraduate admissions Corinne Smith wrote to the News. “States are vast and each one has rural, urban, and suburban areas. Yale’s admissions process allows us to review students holistically within their specifi c context, background, high school, neighborhood, and geographic setting.”

Smith also serves as one of two co-advisors for the Rural Students Alliance at Yale, a group that works to offer community for rural and small-town students. Byler currently serves as president of RSAY.

Looking to the future, Byler and founding RSAY member Franklin Eccher ’19 expressed support for an expansion of on-campus support through a peer liaison program geared toward rural and small-town students. Smith, too, favors the idea.

“I think rural PLs would be such an asset for the campus because a lot of rural and small town students don’t realize their identity as small town students until they get here and even afterwards,” Byler said. “I think it would be invaluable, especially as rural students navigate public transport for the first time to the academic rigors and just overall want to find other people that have had the life experiences they had in high school.”

Geographic diversity in the admissions process

According to Smith, the push for increasing geographic diversity on college campuses stems from growing recognition that many students from rural and small-town areas think of schools like Yale as “unattainable or una ordable,” and may face disproportionate barriers to entry — such as lack of information and a reduced college-going culture.

At the same time, rural and smalltown students often bring unique and valuable perspectives to campus. There is a strong correlation between students from rural and small-town areas and those who are fi rst-generation or low-income, which means that many students have to be particularly creative to seek opportunities that further their academic and extracurricular interests, according to Smith.

As early as 2017, the Yale admissions office began to expand their outreach efforts to include Zoom tours and information sessions that are specifi cally geared towards students from these backgrounds and make information about Yale more accessible. Transitions to virtual outreach models, brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, made it possible to bring more accessible live information events to rural and small-town students, who are sometimes situated in areas geographically di cult to reach in-person.

This past fall, the admissions o ce returned to its fi rst in-person school visits in three years. The admissions o ce now o ers a mix of in-person and virtual outreach programming, including information sessions and tours.

Smith also pointed to the newly-returned Ambassadors Program, which hired current Yale students to visit high schools in their hometowns over the November and winter recesses, as a tool to reach out to more rural and small-town students.

The admissions office’s work around geographic diversity specifically refers to domestic applicants. While the College recruits and admits students worldwide, their discussion of and approach to geographic diversity in this way is specifically geared toward applicants from U.S. states and territories.

Rural students face certain challenges when applying to college, such as fewer AP/IB courses offered in high school, further distance to travel for college fairs and a perception that top colleges may not be attainable, according to Byler and Eccher.

“There are different expectations and different requirements for a student who’s applying to [an Ivy League school] than your local public university,” Byler said. “There is also the idea that very selective institutions and Ivy Leagues are just so expensive. There’s that sticker price of how much it is a year and there isn’t a lot of knowledge about the generosity of their fi nancial aid programs. I think that also ties in that perception of attainability.”

There are around 80 to 100 rural and small town students that enroll in Yale each year, according to comments Smith gave to the Daily Yonder.

Campus experience

When they arrive at Yale, many rural and small-town students seek community. In 2018, Eccher and Jared Michaud ’19 founded the Rural Students Alliance at Yale to provide exactly that. The organization provides help with adjusting to living in a city like New Haven, such as navigating public transportation and how to get to and from campus.

Smith serves as a co-advisor for RSAY, alongside Timothy Dwight Dean Sarah Mahurin.

A core part of RSAY’s goal is to o er a space where students can discuss similar experiences associated with the transition from a rural to an urban environment and to then collectively advocate for more support.

“It was a two-day Odyssey to get back and forth from my hometown to campus,” Eccher said, speaking of his journey between Yale’s campus and his home in Montrose, Colorado, while he was a Yale College student. “That was something that RSAY couldn’t necessarily support, but it was helpful to fi nd other people who have that experience and then could talk to the admissions o ce and say, ‘this is what it’s really

MADELYN KUMAR/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

Over the last six years, Yale Admissions has worked to enroll more rural and smalltown students. The Rural Students Alliance at Yale has expressed support.

like to get back and forth to campus which can be a real challenge.’”

According to Byler, RSAY is now working to plan events for the end of the fall semester.

Their other events over the term have included an ice cream social and a blue-booking event. Generally, RSAY also works with the admissions o ce to host Q&A webinars for prospective rural and small-town student applicants, according to Byler.

What’s next?

Smith and RSAY are also supportive of a rural peer liaison program, similar to current offerings through Yale’s cultural houses, Student Accessibility Services and the O ce of LGBTQ+ Resources.

In existing peer liaison programs, University student employees are assigned by residential colleges.

Smith, Byler and Eccher all described ways in which the presence of peer mentors, especially early in a student’s time at Yale, could help support the rural or small-town experience.

“Rurality and the experiences of rural and small-town students are not monolithic,” Smith wrote. “They differ by state, region, and community. However, there are absolutely things that many rural students have in common. Whether that’s needing to learn how to use public transportation, struggling to sleep due to street noise, or being overwhelmed by the vast curricular options at Yale. So many transitional moments can be aided by the existence of mentors or Peer Liaisons who can relate to that experience and offer advice.”

Eccher also noted the value in having a peer that can assist in fi nding other supportive communities.

For him specifically, as he is from a small town in Colorado, he missed being part of the outdoors.

“I didn’t really know how to access parks like East Rock or Yale’s outdoors program, so trying to find opportunities to get out of the New Haven bubble was also a real challenge,” Eccher said. “Having a peer liaison to help you find communities that are able to access some of those things can be really amazing.”

Aside from a potential peer liaison program, Byler is planning for the future of RSAY. Specifi cally, she hopes to build community through events, sharing playlists and other social activities this spring.

RSAY was founded in 2018.

Contact ANIKA SETH at anika.seth@yale.edu , TRISTAN HERNANDEZ at tristan.hernandez@yale.edu and HANNAH KURCZESKI at hannah.kurczeski@yale.edu .