Yale Political Union

Yale Political Union

Banner of the Yale Political Union
Formation	1934
Type	Student organization
Purpose	to provide Yale with a non-partisan forum for parliamentary debate and to encourage the discussion of matters of public interest by other suitable means.
Location	Yale University
Website	The Yale Political Union

The Yale Political Union (YPU) is a debate society at Yale University, founded in 1934 by Professor Alfred Whitney Griswold. It was modeled on the Cambridge Union Society 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 the central forum for political discussion and activism at Yale, and is arguably Yale's largest student organization.

The Union is an umbrella organization that currently contains seven Parties: the Liberal Party (Lib), the Party of the Left (PoL), the Independent Party (IP), the Federalist Party (Fed), the Conservative Party (CP), the Tory Party (Tory), and the Party of the Right (POR). These parties are independent debating societies that host their own debates and activities apart from Union activities, though members will come together for weekly Union debates. The Parties are traditionally listed in the order above.

In the past, the Political Union has had other Parties, including a Radical Party, a Bull Moose Party, a Constitutional Union Party, a Labor Party, a Liberal Democrat Party, a Progressive Party, and a group called the "Third Force", but not concurrently. The minimum number of parties has been two, the maximum seven, while four is typical.

Though party size and membership varies greatly over the decades, the Independent Party has consistently been the largest party in the Union for a decade. In recent semesters, the Party of the Left, the Party of the Right, and the Tory Party have each had their turn as the second largest party. The other parties have been comparatively smaller but always met the minimum voting requirement (25 active members).

The Liberal Party is one of the three founding constituent parties of the Yale Political Union. The Liberals don’t use parliamentary procedure or dress up for their weekly discussions.

The Party of the Left (PoL) was formed in the spring of 2006 by a group of left-leaning students who were looking for more formal philosophical debate on the Left of the Union, emphasizing a synthesis of first principles and policy. PoL debates are more formal than Liberal Party discussions, as they are conducted following parliamentary procedure.