Student dismisses talks over racism

NEW HAVEN — Yale University officials, contending with yet another racially charged event on campus, are taking a number of steps “to affirm Yale’s commitment to equity and inclusion,” as Yale President Peter Salovey wrote after the May 8 incident involving two graduate students.

However, the black graduate student who was questioned for 17 minutes after a white fellow resident of the Hall of Graduate Studies called police believes the incident exemplified racial bias and university officials should be acting rather than holding further meetings and sensitivity-training sessions.

One meeting has been held, which the Yale Daily News called a “tense, two-hour listening session.” The meeting, not open to the public, included about 30 graduate students, according to the student newspaper, as well as Yale Police Chief Ronnell Higgins; Kimberly GoffCrews, Yale secretary and vice president for student life; Janet Lindner, vice president for human resources and administration; Lynn Cooley, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences; and Eileen O’Connor, vice president for communications.

On May 8, Yale police were called to the York Street building, which houses 168 graduate students. A white philosophy major, Sarah Braasch, had made the call when she found Lolade Siyonbola, a black graduate student who is majoring in African studies, sleeping in a common room.

Siyonbola recorded, on Facebook Live, the 17-minute meeting with police, in which she opened her room to show that she lived there and hesitated before giving police her identification card. She told police she had been writing a paper in the common room, which is on a different floor.

Goff-Crews, in an email sent to the Yale community Wednesday, wrote that “the effort to determine the identity of one student took longer than usual because of our recently implemented preferred name policy,” which allows students to use a different first name on their ID cards, email addresses and other documents. Yale spokesman Thomas Conroy has said the policy was implemented largely to accommodate transgender students who want to be known according to their gender identity.

“The university is resolving this issue within our directory system and is ensuring that Yale Police dispatchers are trained to quickly identify students using their preferred or legal names,” Goff-Crews wrote. Also, she said, Higgins has reviewed the incident with the officers and their supervisors and “Yale Police officers will receive additional training in de-escalation, problem solving, and unbiased policing, supplementing their existing training on inclusion, diversity, and, unconscious bias.”

Asked if she believed the length of time she was questioned by Yale police was because of the difference between her preferred and legal names, Siyonbola replied in an email: “Absolutely not. This is America. If I was white, the police would not have been called. In the impossible case that they were called, my access to my apartment and my Yale ID would’ve been enough for them.”

Siyonbola said she “absolutely” felt the officers’ actions were racially discriminatory. She said her legal name is Ololade Siyonbola, “one letter difference,” and her Yale ID gives her name as Lolade. “Whatever was in the system shouldn’t be a focus here. It’s a convenient focal point for Yale because they don’t seem to want to hold the police — or Sarah — accountable,” she wrote.

Siyonbola said she believes Braasch should be expelled for calling police on her.

Braash did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

On Wednesday, Goff-Crews wrote that she has held further meetings “to hear you relate your experiences and ideas for action.” She wrote that there would be two additional “listening sessions” this week.

Siyonbola called the listening sessions “insulting. The administration was told that we didn’t want listening sessions, we simply wanted for action to be taken. A list of demands were provided to Yale over two years ago. … Insisting that more research, more conversation is necessary is insulting to every black student, faculty member, staff member and every black person who is aware of this story. By not tackling this issue head-on, Yale sends a loud message to potential black students that their safety is not priority and their welcome at Yale will be conditional.”

Siyonbola