The Advocacy Committee works to resolve issues facing the graduate and professional student population by serving as a liaison between the student population and the administration, faculty and various officers at Yale.  The Student Advocate serves as the Chair of the Advocacy Committee.
The issues currently being addressed by the Advocacy Committee include, but are not limited to, security and transit, healthcare, dental insurance, student housing, and graduate student inclusion.
Recent Advocacy Committee Developments:

• Creation and administration of the GPSS Dental Expense Fund to provide relief to students who have incurred dental related expenses because of the lack of a university dental insurance plan.
• Discussions with university officials and representatives from a dental insurance provider to work towards the implementation of a dental insurance program for graduate and professional students.  Stay tuned to www.yale.edu/gpss/dental for upcoming announcements!
• Participation in the Yale Health Plan’s Student Coverage Task Force to re-evaluate prescription coverage plans with the intent of revamping the current ineffective system.
• Distributed a survey on birth control to collect data on student usage and the effect of price increases.
• Successfully lobbied against the expansion of EBJ Childcare, which would have dislodged numerous G&P families from affordable graduate student housing.
• Collaboration with Yale Transit to adjust bus routes based on student needs.  Specifically, members of the advocacy committee have worked to reduce transit time to East Rock and to re-direct bus routes around construction sites with the least disruption to students.
• Advocacy has successfully campaigned for increased security in East Rock and along the York Street corridor (around the Crown Street area).  To address our concerns, increased lighting and a security booth are being placed at the latter site.

If you have any questions, please contact Student Advocacy Committee Chair Emily Stoops (StudentAdvocateGPSS@gmail.com), or submit an issue via our online form.