White student calls police on black peer who fell asleep in dorm common room

Lolade Siyonbola’s exasperated message to the campus police officers — and to the Yale graduate student who’d summoned them to her dorm — was simple and consistent:

She didn’t have to do anything to prove that she was justified in being there, just because she happened to be black.

“I deserve to be here. I pay tuition like everybody else,” an annoyed Siyonbola told officers after they repeatedly asked her to hand over identification. “I’m not going to justify my existence here.”

It was part of a tense, racially tinged exchange the student had this week with four police officers and the graduate student who called 911 after she found Siyonbola napping in the Hall of Graduate Studies’ 12th floor common room.

Nationwide controversy

The Monday encounter, broadcast by Siyonbola on Facebook Live, has roiled the campus community, sparking campus leaders to call for more conversations about inclusiveness. The nation is also engaged in a dialogue about disparate treatment of minorities in public places after black people who have not committed crimes have controversially had the police called on them at an Alabama Waffle House, a Philadelphia Starbucks and a Pennsylvania golf course.

And for anyone keeping score, it adds “napping” to the long and apparently still growing list of things it is unacceptable to do while black.

Other entrants include: couponing while black; graduating too boisterously while black; waiting for a school bus while black; throwing a kindergarten temper tantrum while black; drinking iced tea while black; waiting at Starbucks while black; AirBnB’ing while black; shopping for underwear while black; having a loud conversation while black; golfing too slowly while black; buying clothes at Barney’s while black, or Macy’s, or Nordstrom Rack; getting locked out of your own home while black; going to the gym while black; asking for the Waffle House corporate number while black; and reading C.S. Lewis while black, among others.

Siyonbola is a first-year graduate student in the African Studies department at Yale. She had papers and books spread out in a common room while writing a paper Monday but had flipped off the lights and went to sleep, she explained in her Facebook Live video.

Another graduate student, Sarah Braasch, walked in, turned on the lights and said she was calling police. The common room was off-limits for sleeping, she added.

What followed was a racially tinged, police-involved dispute between neighbors that aired lived on Facebook — then spread.

“Once we verify that you belong here, we’ll be on our way,” an officer said.

‘Every right to be present’

Ultimately, but unhappily, Siyonbola relented. She did not immediately respond to Washington Post messages seeking comment.

As the police tried to sort out who she was, she told them Braasch had called police on her friend about three months ago “because he was in the stairwell and he was black.”

Braasch, a graduate philosophy student, also could not be reached for comment. She had reportedly deleted social media accounts or set them to private after the incident.

Kimberly Goff-Crews, Yale’s vice president for student life, said in an email to the university community that the officers admonished the student who called 911 that “the other student had every right to be present.”

Goff-Crews said she had discussed the incident with other Yale leaders, trying to figure out “how we can work together to avoid such incidents in the future.” She said they were planning “listening sessions” with the Yale community and encouraged students to share their thoughts.