Welcome Pauli Murray Class of 2026

Dear Pauli Murray Class of 2026,

We are delighted to welcome you to the first-year class of Pauli Murray College! You are now officially a PauliMur, and we cannot wait to celebrate the arrival of the Class of 2026.

The newest of Yale’s residential colleges (our neighbor Benjamin Franklin College was completed a few days before us), Pauli Murray College was designed by Robert A.M. Stern, one of America’s most preeminent architects and former dean of Yale’s architecture school. We look forward to sharing with you our lovely courtyards and the prettiest dining hall at Yale. Get ready to enjoy the most spacious accommodations on campus!

But the things that make Pauli Murray College the best college have only something to do with our surroundings. Pauli Murray College is a thriving, welcoming, and diverse community, whose mascot is the ring-tailed lemur—spelled LiMur around these parts. Just like lemurs, LiMurs form close-knit families, and we look forward to involving you in our community. Our first-year counselors (a.k.a., FroCos) cannot wait to help guide you through your first year. Very soon, our FroCo team will be getting in touch with you. You’ll also be assigned a big sib or two from our sophomore, junior, and senior classes.  We’ll be looking forward to your participation in the college council and also in intramural sports, where our college just won the championship Tyng Cup for the first time.

Our college is named after Pauli Murray, a groundbreaking civil-rights activist, poet, and jurist, and the first African-American female priest in the Episcopal church. Pauli was ahead of the curve on so many matters, waging lifelong battles against racism, homophobia, and sexism. Pauli is our inspiration. We throw a birthday party every year in Pauli’s honor, complete with cupcakes and a poetry reading, and often sponsor other Pauli-related events (we just had a close family friend as a guest, offering hugs so that folks could be just one hug away from Pauli). In these past years, more than ever, Pauli has been a role model to all of us, showing by example the importance of perseverance, of self-belief, and finally of community. Pauli wrote, “True Community is based upon equality, mutuality, and reciprocity. It affirms the richness of individual diversity as well as the common human ties that bind us together.” As we work together to help all of us thrive, we always aim to live up to that ideal.

You’ll be the first Yale class to experience the full Camp Yale, and we know that by the time classes start, the sight of Bass Tower over the horizon will give you the sense of warmth it does to us, knowing that you’re almost back to where you belong.

Welcome home, LiMur.

With our very warmest wishes,

Tina Lu, Head of College
Alexander Rosas, Dean