Dwight Hall 2023 Year in Review

The Long Legacy of
Dwight Hall Summer Fellows
Dwight Hall Summer Fellows is a leadership development program through which Yale undergraduates
advance community-based public service and social justice work in New Haven and beyond.
The program was founded in 1968 by Dr.
David L. Warren ’70 M.Div., ’70 M.U.S.
in response to the twin assassinations of
Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. that year. Having spent
years learning how to address issues using nonviolence
and community organizing, David
developed Summer Fellows while serving as a
Dwight Hall intern. (He would go on to lead
Dwight Hall as General Secretary from 1969 to
1976.) Selected students would receive a sum
of $500 each in exchange for going out into
the community and asking how their skills and
resources could be best utilized by community
members. Student proposals had to make clear
that whatever initiative they established was
directly responding to community needs and
would be continued into the fall.
Undergraduates and graduate students from
the Yale Law School, Divinity School, School of
Architecture, and School of Drama comprised
the initial cohort of Fellows. Their proposals
combined their areas of expertise with the
specific needs of New Haven community
members. Some of the projects that grew
from this cohort included the Free School
at Yale, a free university offering courses on
subjects like race in America and the war in
Vietnam that were open to and taught by New
Haven community members, Yale faculty, and
students; a street theatre where local students
wrote their own drama and performed it;
and legal counseling for tenants experiencing
landlord conflicts and individuals seeking to
gain citizenship.
Summer Fellows alumni now comprise more
than 500 professionals and social change leaders,
many of whom highlight this experience as their
most meaningful one at Yale.
Summer Fellows Alumni Through the Years
John Wilhelm ’67
Urban civil disorder swept
the U.S. in the 1960s. New
Haven suffered major
disturbances in August
1967. Then in December
1967, banner headlines
announced the arrest of
New Haven activists in a
bomb plot. On April 4,
1968, the Rev. Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. was
assassinated. Disorders
again swept New Haven and the country. Meanwhile the
U.S. escalated the Vietnam War. Yale Chaplain William
Sloan Coffin became a national leader of the anti-Vietnam
war movement.
This extraordinary time led many Americans, especially
young people, to question all our assumptions. I had
graduated from Yale College in 1967 and stayed in New
Haven to work on a community organizing project. I was
fortunate that David Warren, the thoughtful and
passionate leader of Dwight Hall, invited me to join the
inaugural Dwight Hall Summer Fellows program in summer
1968. The Fellows David brought together had very
different experiences and outlooks. We shared a hope that
in some small way each of us could help bring greater
justice to New Haven and our country. I believe the Summer
Fellows shared my gratitude for the opportunity to struggle
with the angst of those profound events in a caring group.
We were thankful that David Warren was our leader that
summer, because of his unique ability to synthesize political
and moral viewpoints and town and gown attitudes.
Another less noticed event occurred in New Haven: Yale’s
dining hall, custodial, and maintenance workers went on
strike in April 1968, seeking to improve their very low
wages and benefits. They returned to work without
achieving their objectives. Largely black and Italian-
American, many of them women, they were Yale’s least
prestigious employees.
The following year I joined the Yale union as its members
strengthened their unity to challenge their wealthy and
powerful employer. I had become convinced that unions
are necessary to challenge our nation’s economic and racial
divisions. Yale workers struck again in April 1971. This time
they were unified in a quest for greater worker rights that
The 2023 Summer Fellows contributed 6,600 hours of service work with agencies and NGOs in
New Haven and across the country. Dwight Hall also hosted in-person receptions in Washington, DC
and San Francisco in July 2023, connecting 16 Fellows and undergraduates with 26 alumni in
those cities. The Hall plans to grow opportunities for alumni mentorship and students’ professional
development as the Summer Fellows program continues to expand to communities nationwide.
became an inspiring struggle for civil rights. They were
successful, but only after a police riot on commencement
day injured many workers and led to global headlines.
My decision to join the Yale union came out of the Summer
Fellows Program. That decision led to my life’s work in the
labor movement. I am forever grateful to Dwight Hall, to
the 1968 Summer Fellows, and to David Warren.
Lauren Thompson Starks ’05
Lauren Thompson Starks ’05 served as a 2003 Dwight
Hall Summer Fellow and as a Dwight Hall student Board
member. Given Dwight Hall’s anchor in the Yale and New
Haven communities, Lauren was excited to be a part of
making a difference with her peers.
As a student, Lauren found
Dwight Hall to be an excellent
resource for deepening her
involvement with CARE USA,
an international humanitarian
nonprofit she first began
volunteering with in high
school. She founded the
College Council for CARE—
CARE’s first college youth
program—as a Dwight Hall
member group. Then the
organization partnered with
other Dwight Hall member groups, such as the Yale
Hunger and Homelessness Action Project, and organized
fundraising and other efforts focused on fighting poverty
in the developing world.
Since then, Lauren’s public service career has spanned
two Presidential administrations and centered on
promoting educational equity and economic
development for the American people. She served as the
first-ever Woodbridge Fellow within Yale’s Offices of the
President, the Secretary and Vice President, and the
General Counsel. A graduate of Columbia Law School —
with training that emphasized lawyers’ roles in shaping
policy — Lauren served as the Chief of Staff to the Acting
General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Education
(ED). She also served as the senior advisor to ED’s Under
Secretary and the White House Domestic Policy Council
and later continued to focus on innovation in higher
education policy at Southern New Hampshire University.
Prior to her current role as Director of Good Companies/
Good Jobs, an initiative of the Aspen Institute Economic
Opportunities Program, Lauren led the U.S. Economic
Development Administration’s $500 million Good Jobs
Challenge program. She loves to meet students and
connect with them about law school, policy, and how
they can see themselves as problem solvers and leaders
in many ways throughout their careers.
Kat Moon ’24
Kat Moon ’24 is a senior majoring
in Molecular Biophysics and
Biochemistry and History of
Science, Medicine, and Public
Health. Outside of the classroom,
she serves as an undergraduate
researcher at Neugebauer Lab, a
Social Services Director at
HAVEN Free Clinic, and also a
soprano for Yale Gospel Choir.
Drawn to medicine as an
intersection of science, service,
and humanity, Kat aspires to
become a physician who can see human lives behind
clinical symptoms. The Dwight Hall Summer Fellowship
was particularly instrumental in shaping her views about
healthcare and community. As a 2023 Summer Fellow,
Kat undertook various initiatives at HAVEN Free Clinic,
such as strengthening community relationships with
local NGOs, integrating interdepartmental resources,
and launching the Food as Medicine (food voucher)
program for patients.
Through these projects, she learned how small systemic
changes can significantly impact patient lives and
experienced firsthand the power of collaboration. For
example, Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services
shared resources that have become integral to Social
Services’ daily work, while 4CT assisted in running the
financial services for the Food as Medicine initiative. This
is not to mention the effort of countless HAVEN
members who share the same visions.
Kat hopes to apply the lessons learned from serving as a
Summer Fellow to her medical career, holding a deep
appreciation for peers, mentors, and the local community.
Specifically, she dreams of continuing to promote
collaboration between healthcare and the community
wherever she goes.
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