@RandyErika - Seriously? If you read the article, watched the video and followed the conversation, I think it’s clear what I’m talking about. This woman was working on a paper and fell asleep and had the police called on her. There was an allegation that she was overreacting. I’m saying that I would be just as pissed off if I were working on a paper and someone called the police and then I had to stand in the hallway for 15 minutes waiting for the police to validate my presence.
@Trixy34 Thanks for the clarification - no offense intended. I had read this thread, the article and watched the first video, and there was no mention of the napping woman working on a paper. Maybe I missed it. I was actually afraid the cop-caller was working on a paper and you were siding with her. So we’re on the same page.
- AirBnB can be deleted from the list,
Concerning Gates, FWIW, although non-black, I have been stopped and thoroughly checked over (in Canada) whilst breaking into my own house.
What’s wrong with Yale? This is the second incident I heard of at Yale. I somehow thought this doesn’t happen at liberally minded college campus. Does this happen at other campuses? Or are they sensitive because of their location?
@sorghum Were you breaking in because you forgot your keys? My recollection is that Gates had keys to his own front door.
I find all this very dispiriting - I took lots of naps on the very comfortable sofas of my college’s common rooms. No papers involved, just a break between classes.
According to Yale, the complaining student was in the wrong. The napping student did nothing wrong. According to Yale there is no debate about this. Yale doesn’t try to justify or excuse the complainer’s actions, in anything I have read so far.
^ new this morning and well worth reading the entire article in my opinion. The reporting student already had created distress and controversy by calling the police about a different Yale student who didn’t seem to her to belong in the building, even though he was there for a meeting. That was a really, really bad judgement call on her part. There was a complaint filed about her. To me, this latest incident just seems deliberately ugly meaness on the part of the woman calling the police.
There was debate on the Colorado thread about publishing names. However we feel about that, in some cases it will be inevitable. If the complaining woman had just apologized after the first incident and not called the police again, she would probably not be in the news today. Maybe it will be interesting to learn more about her motives. Maybe she is the one who really wanted publicity. It should have been a foreseeable result of her actions. imho.
@Sue22-I agree that she should have shown ID. However, the speculation of her having a key to her dorm/room is a little extravagant. I wonder if this speculation would have happened if she weren’t black…
In light of the fact that the woman has called the police for the same reason on the same group of people, it’s kind of not necessary to know the whole story.
I love how when she did show them her ID, they challenged its authenticity and made her wait while they looked her up, didn’t find her, discovered a misspelling…
What a coincidence, the other person this same woman called the cops on was also black.
I’m curious what Yale is going to do. Once is maybe a misunderstanding, twice is a pattern. Yale’s response of “let’s talk and educate everybody” is a very general response to a very specific problem (i.e. one individual). Charges of racism aside, you have one student in a dorm harassing other students by calling the cops on them for no reason.
BTW, I did a quick search for student racial stats at Yale and see that there’s 7% african americans. Not sure if that figure includes grad students but let’s go with it. 7% * 7% = 0.49%. So 0.49% odds of both incidents involving african americans. Still need more information to be sure there’s racism, right? (that’s sarcasm, btw).
Was it a school ID she showed?
Where was an RA in all this?
I’m not sure grad students have RAs @sciencenerd . The woman who fell asleep was in her 30s, I think, the one reporting as well.
I have to pass through the library to get to my office and I see students napping in there ALL THE TIME. Especially during finals. Luckily, I work on a diverse campus with all sorts of non-traditional students, so no one has ever called the cops. Whew!
I’m wondering if this is a recent phenomenon or has it been going on forever and we are just hearing about it now? Not that I ever thought we were “post-racial” but this is really dispiriting.
I wonder if she has also ever called the cops on or harassed anybody else that wasn’t black.
@Mathmom Wiki sez:
Depending on where you live, if you’re white, the police will probably help you break into your own car. Do you think they’re likely to do that for blacks, specifically black men?
Graduate students don’t have RA’s.
During Finals, students passed out sleeping on couches and tables and about anywhere is a common sight on every campus.
You can be sure that the caller’s history, not just at Yale but elsewhere, will be explored.
Like @petraMC, I’m wondering if it’s a new phenomenom or if it’s always gone on and the data just wasnt collected so we weren’t aware is was a pattern, not a string of individual incidents (or something we weren’t aware of at all).
If you want to see this in action, watch this video.
Woman says Blacks shouldn’t be grilling in park in Oakland and calls the police.
Racist neighbor calls police for Putting Luggage in Car While Black. Nope, this stays right on the list, on the part of the list labelled White People Using Cops As Their Racism Valets. If the police behaved well once they showed up, great, but the fact remains these innocent AirBnB guests were faced with seven squad cars and a helicopter because they were putting suitcases in a car.
Seems like the neighbor running his house as an AirBnb should have let the neighbors know. Perhaps he/she didn’t do that because it violated HOA rules. But…if I see people strange to the neighborhood (and I know my neighbors by sight) loading things from a house into a car, I would call the police. If I didn’t and my neighbors were being robbed, I would feel terrible.