The YDN covers GESO's advocacy over the past week: More than 300 graduate students signed a GESO diversity grievance this week asking Yale to increase its financial commitments to diversity programs and create an independent grievance committee on diversity and equal opportunity. GESO members also protested, urging the University to balance the stipends teaching assistants receive regardless of their status at the Graduate School. Currently, teaching assistants before their fifth year are paid $16,000 stipends, but teaching assistants in their fifth year and beyond receive $12,530, according to GESO's pay equity grievance. And mentions the plight of someone you'll be hearing more about: Chemistry professor Connie Allen, a GESO supporter who said she was one of the only black teachers in Yale's science departments, said she was laid off in December due to the current budget crisis. She had taught at Yale for four years. "If teaching excellence and diversity mean something to Yale, there's really no reason why my contract should not be renewed," Allen said. "I do think it's important for freshmen to be able to see diversity -- and know that succeeding in the sciences is possible." As someone who sat in an open forum last spring at which Yale College Dean Richard Brodhead asserted that Yale is doing everything it can to hire and retain faculty of color, but that there just aren't enough qualified candidates, I find Yale's treatment of Professor Allen that much more absurd.