NEW YORK (TIP): Kushal Dev, a second-year student at Yale’s Silliman College has founded the Silliman Textbook Library — a communal space housing over 1,000 textbooks that can be used by Yale students who can’t afford them. Students can use them at any time for free.

After struggling to access an especially expensive economics textbook himself, Dev decided to do something to help fellow students who found their textbooks financially prohibitive. A friend, former Yale College Council president Peter Huang ’18, had once touted the idea of a textbook library. Dev brought the idea to fruition by soliciting donations from fellow students, alumni, and others at Yale, receiving an initial donation of some 600 books. The books, initially kept in the Acorn — Silliman College’s coffee shop — were moved this year to a dedicated space in the residential college’s library.

A political science major, Dev is interested in the intersection of technology, pop culture, and politics, as well as in racial and queer politics.

(Courtesy: Yale)