Campus Clips

Yale College will once again require applicants for admission to submit SAT or ACT scores, beginning this fall with the Class of 2031. Yale and many of its peers changed to a “test-optional” policy in 2020 during the pandemic; Yale switched to a “test-flexible” policy two years ago, allowing applicants to submit ACT, SAT, Advanced Placement, or International Baccalaureate scores. The admissions office reports that 92 percent of the incoming Class of 2030 included an SAT or ACT score with their application. 

The justice department accused the School of Medicine of discrimination in its admissions policies. In a May 14 letter, the department said it had determined that the school used “racial proxies” in evaluating applicants after the 2023 Supreme Court decision prohibiting the consideration of race. The letter says that “Yale discriminated against other applicants to benefit preferred race classes of Black and Hispanic.” Yale spokesperson Karen Peart says that the applicants the school admitted “demonstrate exceptional academic achievement and personal commitment” and that Yale was “confident in the rigorous admissions process.”

Postdoctoral scholars at Yale voted to join a union in April. In an election facilitated by the American Arbitration Association, 890 of 1,386 eligible postdocs cast ballots, with 859 voting to unionize under the banner of UNITE-HERE Local 33, which has represented Yale graduate student workers since their union was recognized in 2023. The university says it will enter negotiations with the union.

A Yale Law School clinic has chosen sides in the beef between rappers Drake and Kendrick Lamar. More accurately, the school’s Floyd Abrams Institute for Freedom of Expression weighed in on the side of the First Amendment. In a brief concerning Drake’s defamation lawsuit over Lamar’s track “Not Like Us,”—in which Lamar accused Drake of pedophilia—the clinic argues that in his own tracks, Drake had actually goaded Lamar into making the claim. “One who consents to defamation cannot later seek redress in court,” the brief contends. The suit was dismissed by a federal judge last fall; the brief was filed in response to Drake’s appeal of that dismissal. 

Doing laundry on campus used to mean a regular search for quarters to feed the machines. Mobile payment apps have made that quest obsolete, but the cost still adds up for low-income students. After lobbying from student leaders, the university has agreed to make the machines free and include the cost of laundry in the room and board bill, starting this fall.