Yale University is now the focus on yet another incident where people of color are the target of minor complaints and police involvement. Many people will remember the Starbucks incident, in which two men of color were arrested. Then, over the weekend, three women of color were suspected for burglary after leaving their Airbnb in California. Now, in this string of events, a Yale student faces police for sleeping in her dorm’s common area.
Lolade Siyonbola is a graduate student at the Yale University, and recently she took a nap in a common room at her dorm. That is, until a white PhD candidate of philosophy, Sarah Braasch, found her sleeping, and announced that she shouldn’t be sleeping there and that she would call the polie.
And call the police she did. According to Siyonbola’s Facebook page, this is’t the first time Braash called the police on other students of color. And in a Facebook video posted by Siyonbola, Braash tells her, “I have every right to call the police.”
However, Siyonbola recorded the 17-minute affair with the police. And in her video, Siyonbola tells the police, “I deserve to be here. I pay tuition like everybody else. I’m not going to justify my existence here.”
In response to the incident, dean of Yale’s graduate school of arts and sciences, Lynn Cooley, emailed all graduate students saying, “Incidents like that of last night remind us of the continued work needed to make Yale a truly inclusive place.”