Anyone following the Sarah Braasch “Napping While Black” incident at Yale University has probably heard that Braasch had indeed called the Yale Police non-emergency number a little over 2 months earlier (February 24, 2018) because of a suspicious person in her dormitory.
Braasch had observed that an unfamiliar man, who got on the elevator with her, did not have a key to operate the elevator or to enter the locked room where he said he had a meeting on the 12th Floor. In fact, this would imply the man didn’t have key access to have entered the building without an escort in the first place. Braasch confirmed that the 12th Floor meeting room he said he was looking for was locked with the lights off before returning to her dorm room, also on the 12th floor, to notify the YPD.
Braasch is currently pursuing a Freedom of Information request with the Connecticut FOI Commission asking that Yale Police release the body camera footage of a later, related encounter with the Yale Police on May 8, 2018. Yale is vigorously defending the FOIA request.
Yale University retains prominent attorney to defend FOIA request made by Yale student Sarah Braasch
More on the FOIA request and the post-hearing briefs may be found here:
Interestingly, in Yale’s post-hearing brief, they make much ado about proper access to the building and the regulations thereof.
From Yale’s brief, we are able to understand that intrusions or unauthorized access to dormitories do occasionally happen:
A link to Yale’s full post-hearing link may be found here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzOJKJMkQ_ajeEV0MjBVY2xlbkNSLTdpTVM5cVpwbk53TFg4/view
A link to Sarah Braasch’s post-hearing brief may be found here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzOJKJMkQ_aja1BoVUNvbjJsZFpEUXQzbHU0YVdNd2xQMlA4/view?usp=sharing
As it turns out, the man Braasch encountered on February 24, 2018 did not have proper access to the building without an escort, but once police discovered that the man was a Yale affiliate and was to be met by a resident, all was declared fine and everyone was to go about their business. Case closed, right?
Well, no. Here’s what happened next. A few days later, the man in the elevator and his host wrote a joint letter to Yale Housing Director George Longyear. In the joint letter, it was explained that the instructions to the male were to text his host upon arrival at the gate so the host could escort her guests to the 12th Floor per dormitory regulations. However, the male had gained access to the building and the elevator and was attempting to find the meeting room on his own.
The letter to Yale’s Housing Director recounts the elevator encounter from the man’s perspective, but then goes into quite a long discussion of “microaggressions and psychological violence” experienced by black students on Yale’s campus.
The letter then moves on to a discussion of lynchings for entertainment and public executions by police. Thus, the authors of the letter believe Braasch’s phone call to the non-emergency line of YPD was “an act of violence because of the history of state sanctioned executions of faultless Black men, women and children.”
The final line of the letter refers to “the context in which they are operating without making racist judgments.”
A link to the full letter may be found here. The majority of the letter was released to the public via Facebook immediately following the May 8, 2018 encounter. That post has since been deleted.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzOJKJMkQ_ajZ1V5RVlLUkVPX2piNFNnQXdQUWcxYXUxTzZN/view?usp=sharing
In an interview with CNN’s Don Lemon, the man remains convinced Braasch only called the Yale Police because he is black and was racially profiled. After the story went viral, Braasch continues to try and prove to the public that racial animus was not a motivation in asking YPD to confirm the man’s access to the dormitory.
Braasch plans to release additional documents in the coming days. She is also raising funds to support her legal defense against Yale Police and Yale University.