“Lipstick” Traces Latest Yalie Protest

by Adele Haeg

U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro: “There is no doubt that Yale is being pushed up against the wall, but this is when our integrity matters the most.”

Yale junior Trent Page: “If our work is necessary to this university’s basic function, then we demand to shape its future.”

Susan Desilver, Margaret Quinn, and David Quinn at Friday’s protest.

Hundreds of Yale students rallied around a cardboard replica of the famous Lipstick statue Friday afternoon, urging the university to avoid a settlement with the Trump administration over Yale’s admissions policies — and protesting recently implemented free speech policies restricting campus gatherings.

Friday’s demonstration — the most attended protest held on Yale’s Beinecke Plaza since 2024 — violated those policies, which require students to register on-campus demonstrations and ask for permission before placing any structures outdoors on university property.

The measures, which student organizers called “restrictive and arbitrarily enforced,” were put in place after pro-Palestine protests on campus in 2024, during which Yale police arrested dozens of students.

Friday’s was the second unregistered demonstration a group known as “Democratize Yale” has held on campus since a teach-in last month.

“That Yale’s policies today ban such work along with peaceful student protests and demonstrations without the university’s express permission is censorious and outrageous. What is Yale afraid of?” the sculptures’ architects, Sam Callaway and Stuart Wrede, wrote in a statement sent to organizers. 

Claes Oldenburg’s actual Lipstick statue — its full title is Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks — was first installed in a college courtyard during antiwar protests in 1969, against university policies. It was moved last year to the Yale University Art Gallery. Students on Friday said they reconstructed it as “a symbol of student dissent on campus.”

Protesters were joined by U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Mayor Justin Elicker, and other Yale faculty and alumni, many affiliated with the group “Democratize Yale.” 

“Yale represents everything this administration resents. Freedom of thought, diversity being our strength, innovative solutions to improve the human condition,” DeLauro said at a press conference held outside Yale Law School as students constructed the Lipstick replica nearby on Beinecke Plaza. DeLauro and Blumenthal have communicated with Yale administrators about the settlement, Blumenthal said at the press conference; the two legislators also sent letters to alders last week asking them to pass a resolution against a deal with the Trump administration. 

“The response that I’ve received, in a letter back to me, was essentially, trust us,” Blumenthal said, “trust us. I’m not willing to trust the administration in Yale with our freedom.”

“All is not well in our classrooms today,” said Amy Kapczynski, law professor and a founder of Yale’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors. “There is a concerted attack on all of our education systems today coming from people like our president, like our vice president, who want to control what we teach here and what you learn. And we here at Yale, like everyone else, are being affected by this assault.”

Blumenthal has been demonstrating against the proposed settlement since July, just after the New York Times first reported the university was in negotiations with the Department of Justice. Yale President Maurie McInnis confirmed in July that the university was in talks with the Department of Justice, and in August, said negotiations were ongoing. 

In response to requests for comment, a university spokesperson emailed: “It is Yale’s longstanding practice not to discuss the specifics of any ongoing legal matter. That said, Yale is committed to following the law and has provided information to the DOJ regarding our admissions processes. Yale’s commitment to academic freedom is absolute and its admissions and hiring decisions will continue to be made independently and in accordance with the law.”

Conor Webb, a Yale junior with the Yale College Democrats, said that after students read about the settlement in the Times, many were worried the university would reach an agreement over the summer when students were away. “I think organizing has slowed the pace,” Webb said. 

“From all angles, there’s a very clear message that we feel our values are not being represented in the discussion room,” said John Robert Walker, a junior with the Endowment Justice Collective. One of Democratize Yale’s demands is that the university end its “trustee successor system,” and open voting on trustee selection to more members of the Yale community. Trustees met for the first time this year last month; initially Friday’s protest was planned during their visit, but it was rescheduled due to last weekend’s rainstorm.

Although McInnis has not provided more information about negotiations, she wrote an email to the Yale College Council on Sept. 24 in response to the demands of “Democratize Yale.”

“Our fidelity to academic freedom is absolute,” McInnis wrote. “Our faculty must retain full academic freedom in the classroom, in what they research, and in what they write. Our admissions and hiring decisions must continue to be made independently and in accordance with the law. Our commitment to freedom of expression, which is rooted in the Woodward Report, must remain unwavering and our pursuit of knowledge unfettered.”

Students who received the email disagreed with McInnis’ description of democracy at Yale, writing in a press release in response: “Yale has already wavered from these commitments,” namely by entering into settlement negotiations.

“We will continue to mobilize until our demands are met,” Andrew Storino, a senior with Democratize Yale wrote in a press release. “The surge of student energy on campus has been refreshing in the midst of a national environment where university administrators prove unwilling to stand up for the students, faculty, staff, and alumni that sustain our campuses every day.”

Isabel Matos, a junior and Democratize Yale organizer, was one of a few students to say she was energized to see “life on Beinecke” again, adding that on Friday, students got to see a plaza “true to its roots.”

Students left chalk messages all over the plaza after the protest. One read “Resist,” another “The Trustees are Cowards.”

Blumenthal said at the press conference that Yale was in the middle of a “five-alarm fire”: he said the university was “bending when it should be staying strong.”

Organizers emphasized the Lipstick’s symbolism during the protest: “The image of lipstick extruding from a military tank evinced discordance between stylized consumerism at home and violent militarism abroad,” they wrote in a press release.

Student protesters on Beinecke Friday.

Yale College Council president Alex Chen shores up the makeshift lipstick, duct tape in hand.