Campus clips

A recent New York Times analysis shows that elite universities are more affordable for most people than they might expect. “Typical lower-income students—from a family earning $50,000 or less, for example—face an annual bill of $6,000,” according to the report. Author David Leonhardt ’94 singled out Yale among the 32 colleges that participate in the MyinTuition college cost calculator, writing that “Yale stands out for providing the most financial aid to middle-class students, charging them only slightly more than poor students.”

Journalist James Kirchick ’06 announced in a June Wall Street Journal op-ed that he’s running for election to Yale’s Board of Trustees next year as a petition candidate. Kirchick emphasized free-speech issues in his op-ed. Alumni typically choose from candidates selected by an Association of Yale Alumni committee; however, the bylaws allow a petition candidate on the ballot if the number of alumni signatures the candidate collects is equal to at least 3 percent of the total number of ballots distributed in the previous election. (Kirchick will need 4,266 signatures.) The last petition candidacy was in 2002. Yale’s rules now discourage campaigning for the post, asking that “candidates stand for election solely based on the information included in the official election materials.”

Yale undergraduates are working for nonprofits and governments in the United States this summer as recipients of the university’s first Domestic Summer Awards. The program provides $4,000 stipends that allow 191 students on financial aid to take unpaid internships for at least eight weeks. It complements the existing International Summer Award, which provides up to $12,500 for financial-aid students to work or study in other countries.