Yale Political Union


The Yale Political Union is a debate society at Yale University, founded in 1934 by Alfred Whitney Griswold. It was modeled on the Cambridge Union and Oxford Union and the party system of the defunct Yale Unions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which were in turn inspired by the great literary debating societies of Linonia and Brothers in Unity. Members of the YPU have reciprocal rights at sister societies in England.
The union is an umbrella organization that currently contains seven parties: the Party of the Left, the Progressive Party, the Independent Party, the Federalist Party, the Conservative Party, the Tory Party, and the Party of the Right.

History

Founded in 1934, the Yale Political Union originally had three parties: the Liberal Party, the Radical Party, and the Conservative Party. It has seen the rise and fall of others since. The Radical Party reorganized into the Labor Party in 1937, but it has since become entirely defunct. In 1953, the Party of the Right was founded, contributing to a shift in the union's political landscape, and in 1969, the Tory Party emerged out of the Party of the Right, focusing on traditionalist conservatism. In 2010, the Federalist Party emerged out of the Tory party, claiming that the Tory Party had fallen out of traditionalist conservatism. The Liberal Party changed its name to the Socialist Party in 2019, subsequently left the union in 2020 and has since become defunct. The Progressive Party was founded in 1962, dissolved in the 2000s, and was reconstructed in 2020. The Conservative Party renamed itself the Independent Party in 1977. The modern Conservative Party, established in 1996, considers itself a reconstitution of the original Conservative Party. There remains debate over which party—the Independent Party or the modern Conservative Party—holds the true legacy of the original Conservative Party, with both claiming alumni from the pre-1977 era. The YPU regained strength throughout the 1970s, during which period the Liberal Party was by far the largest, but then suffered a severe blow shortly after A. Bartlett Giamatti became the Yale President.
After several years of rebuilding, the union recovered its numerical strength. This recovery moved into rapid gear during spring term of 1984 when membership tripled to 900 during a term highlighted by a nationally televised debate. By the end of 1987, under the presidency of William Leake, active membership rolls comprised over 1,200 members, nearly 1/4 of the entire student body at Yale, and the YPU successfully launched a Model Congress; a magazine; an annual three-day visit to Washington D.C. for meetings with Cabinet members, Supreme Court justices, IMF and World Bank heads, foreign ambassadors and the director of the National Gallery of Art; and an on-topic debate team, which sent two union members overseas to the world debate championships. Then, the one-vote failure of an attempt to acquire the financially significantly stronger Yale International Relations program at Yale in spring 1987, and the earlier 1980s loss of the YPU's dedicated facilities slowed momentum, and membership declined after a poor recruit in the fall of 1988.
In the early 1990s, membership reached another high point, but it then fell again, as a series of new political organizations on campus diverted politically active Yalies. Though smaller, the parties were relatively stronger and tighter institutions during this period. Most have remained intimate organizations, though with somewhat larger membership, to the current day.
One of the few enduring YPU spinoff publications, Rumpus magazine, was founded by members of the Progressive and Tory Parties in 1992. For the first 3–4 years of its publication, Rumpus remained closely linked to the YPU. One of the more sordid scandals of the period, involving a member who misappropriated the YPU's long-distance phone access number for calls to a racy 1-900 number from his senior single, was broken by Rumpus in the fall of 1994.
As more and more Yale undergraduate organizations were founded, the YPU lost its offices under Bingham Hall. It managed to retain its small office on Crown Street, although the union has recently begun a capital campaign to raise funds for a new building. The union's home is now in Connecticut Hall, the university's oldest building. During its various moves, irreplaceable historical archives were lost, although the YPU's collection of paraphernalia signed by noteworthy public figures is sizable. The YPU hit a low point in membership in the late 1990s. The YPU president, an Independent Party member, was impeached in the fall of 1997, leading to the near collapse of the Independent Party. The effects of this crisis took some time to reverse, though by 2001 the Independent Party was largely restored and began a period of significant growth. Now, the Independent Party is consistently the largest party in the Political Union. Although membership remains roughly 30% of its last peak in the late 1980s, the Political Union remains one of the largest undergraduate organizations at Yale, with approximately 325 members.
Although the union has fluctuated in its influence over the years, membership has generally been in decline since the 1980s. This is the result of the increase in outside political and activist groups that compete with the union for members. In addition, the intellectual rigor of the debates is generally considered to have decreased. Concerns have been raised about the union's relevance and effectiveness, pointing to declining guest quality and diminishing student engagement. However, defenders argue that the union's core mission of fostering open political dialogue remains vital in an ever-evolving campus landscape.

Notable alumni

Labor Party