I am delighted to welcome you to the first-year class of Pauli Murray College! You are now officially a PauliMur, and I cannot wait to celebrate the arrival of the Class of 2027.
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. I look forward to sharing with you our lovely courtyards and the prettiest dining hall at Yale. Also, don’t gloat, but do get ready to enjoy the most spacious accommodations on campus!
The Pauli Murray family is lucky to live in such beautiful surroundings, 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 I 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. When you show up, you can join the college council—and choose some of the great events we throw. And I hope you’ll also participate in intramural sports, where our college just won the championship Tyng Cup for the second time in a row.
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. 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 (over the years I have invited many folks who were close to Pauli, including a close family friend last year, who offered hugs so that folks could be just one hug away from Pauli). You’ll be a member of the first class to enjoy for all four years a magnificent mosaic portrait of Pauli in the dining hall by the artist Mickalene Thomas. The portrait—which extends the full length of the dining hall—articulates visually the enduring, challenging nature of Pauli’s legacy. But Pauli’s words do the same: “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.
Camp Yale will be an introduction not just to Yale, but to Pauli Murray. I 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 me, knowing that you’re almost back to where you belong.
Welcome home, LiMur.
With my very warmest wishes,
Prof. T
Colonel John Trumbull Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures
Head of Pauli Murray College