YALE: “THE ALUMNI ARE READY FOR WAR.” Yale alumni call on Board of Trustees to reinstate petition process.

Students and alumni have pushed back against the decision to end the petition process. They are worried about becoming disenfranchised and ceding influence over the Ivy League university’s decision-making body. Change.org hosts two petitions calling for the board to reinstate the process. As of Tuesday afternoon, 654 people have signed one of the petitions, and more than 1,345 have signed the other.

“The Yale that I attended believed in free speech, transparency, and democracy,” Yale alum Frank Paprota wrote alongside his signature on Change.org. “Abolition of the petition process goes against all of those ideals.”
Gail Lavielle, a 1981 graduate of Yale, had planned to petition to become a candidate for the board in next year’s election. She said hundreds of alumni reached out to her after the board announced it had scrapped the process.

“They want to do something about this,” Lavielle said. “The alumni are ready for war.”

As a believer in public choice economics, I am of the opinion that institutions are generally run for the benefit of those running them, rather than for the benefit of their alleged mission. Yale is a particularly notable example of this.