She does sound too sarky and full of herself to offer personal support to 500 (diverse) students.
A rose by any other name smells just as sweet. People need to stop being offended at minor things like this because it takes energy away from things that deserve real anger. I didn’t even read her Yelp post. It doesn’t matter. Some people are white trash. Some people are lazy. Some people do scam other people to make a living. It’s time to call a spade a spade. I think the Yale dean can do her job at Yale just fine and her job at Yale doesn’t preclude her from having an opinion on Yelp. Why should it? The only thing I would say against her is one issue I have with private schools at any level (K-12, high school, college, whatever) is that they essentially force people to do their academic training in a bubble and not see how the real world really works or lives. Yet the are going to solve real world problems? No, they usually won’t. They can theorize all day and night but when it comes to practical skills they are no better than the rest of the crowd IMHO.
It would help if you did read her Yelp posts, before having an opinion on their validity…
I read the article. Geez, she’s a mean one. It’s not just “white trash” but all sorts of bashing of people she considers “low class” and uneducated. Yet she taught classes in psychology? There’s a phrase for that… those who can’t do, teach.
Plus the utter stupidity of not realizing how public her words were, how easily linked to her person, how it would reflect back on her many roles at Yale, etc. She apologized to her Yale students, but not to the myriad groups of people she pilloried. Of course. That is what someone with a huge blind spot does.
Ugh. She sounds unbearable.
well . . . there is some schaudenfreude here (sp?). A Yale staffer with an elitist tone? No - it’s not possible! 
On the other hand, some grace is probably in order.
We all live in glass houses to one extent or another. We all have blind spots.
Actually, someone who earns a PhD in a social science at a private university could have done his/her PhD research on “real world problems” involving other than the upper middle to upper classes.
Chu has a BA in psychology from Bryn Mawr, EdM from Harvard, and MA and PhD from UC Davis. A quick web search does not seem to indicate what her PhD research at UC Davis was.
UC Davis is a public school with a mostly non-white undergraduate student population (probably from a less upper middle to upper class biased background than the private schools), but is located in a mostly white rural small town with median income that is similar to that of the US, but below that of California. But it is not guaranteed that a PhD student would have had extensive contact with either population, or had the sort of marginal contact that may have intensified stereotypes rather than reduced them.
She’s the typical NE liberal hypocrite. I’ve run across many of them in NYC growing up. BTW I identify myself today as a progressive, but I never look down on people who come from different circumstances than me.
I can’t believe that she actually sent out a college wide email to brag that she was “Yelp Elite”
“Pierson College Dean June Chu — whose insensitive Yelp posts drew criticism earlier this week — has been placed on leave and will not participate in Commencement activities, according to a Thursday morning email from Pierson Head Stephen Davis.”
^^I wondered about that too @3scoutsmom.
Bottom line, there are jerks everywhere, even Yale. I don’t think this really has any bearing on the university. Also, a reminder that in this era of online connectedness, there is no longer any “personal life”. Assume what you are doing.saying can be connected back to you and make sure it’s something you wouldn’t mind your mom reading. 
Mean people suck.
She sounds like a real piece of work…
…even rice in Mexican cuisine…
But some Yale staffers do need to be able to talk to the plumbers who fix plumbing problems in the residential college buildings (or are the plumbers themselves)…
Why? So I can do some really impressive arm-chair psychoanalysis of her Yelp posts and drawn some kind of conclusions about her effectiveness as a dean? Waste of time. This is a non-story. It isn’t fake news but it is close. It is clutter and click bait that gets people to waste large chunks f their day on nonproductive activities.
I’m eating lunch. Taking a break. I’l be back at work in 20-minutes. I’d rather not waste any part of my day reading her Yelp posts and wasting any energy of whatever they tell me about her personally or professionally. I’ll reserve my outrage for something … important. Even if she did call someone “white trash” online they probably deserved it and/or I’ll give it the credibility it deserves if I see it online which is to say not much.
^^ Good point in #15- the problem isn’t just her disdain for students of certain background but also her ability to respect others in the college community.
Not sure what “probably deserved it” means in #16 when it comes to this discussion but as described above the poster in #16 doesn’t have time to write a well-thought out response.
47% of Yale undergrads are white, and 13% are on Pell grants. If the Pell grant students are evenly distributed by race/ethnicity, that means that about 6% are white from the lower half of the family income distribution, probably the set that contains what she calls “white trash”. Students from such backgrounds would be expected to be around 30 of a 500 student residential college.
I went to a private K-8 school and certainly knew the so-called “real world” since, you know, I lived in one of those “white trash” neighborhoods.
I have plenty of friends getting PhDs in my field in private schools (American Culture/Studies). Kind of by definition, they do not study upper middle class and above.
I don’t understand the private school comments, personally.
Plumbers do understand elitist tones/speech 
Anyway, it never fails to make me sad that these types of things exist. Why do people feel the need to bash on people and use slurs? Sure, you can criticize people, but do it without using outdated, racist, classist, etc language.
But it also makes me sad that there is this presumption that somehow because someone is in an elite institution, they are in an impermeable bubble. Believe it or not, some of us clawed our way up but still have deep roots in our home communities.