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Petition Calls on Yale to Boot Cop-Calling Student for 'Harassment, Racism'

Petition Calls on Yale to Boot Cop-Calling Student for 'Harassment, Racism'
Harkness Tower on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Conn., Sept. 9, 2016. (Beth J. Harpaz/AP)

Thursday, 24 May 2018 02:11 PM EDT

More than 2,900 people have signed a petition demanding the ouster of a Yale graduate student who called the police on a black graduate student napping in a school lounge.

The petition, posted on change.org, asks that the Ivy League school boot Sarah Braasch, 43, for her violating "the moral and intellectual codes of the university."

In a video that went viral this month, Yale graduate student Lolade Siyonbola is seen being interrogated by campus police for napping in the common area of her dormitory. The cops came after a white Yale student, identified as Sarah Braasch called them after finding Siyonbola sleeping.

The officers demanded she prove her enrollment even after she showed the officers her own dorm room. Siyonbola says she fell asleep in the common room while working on a paper.

Another Yale student, black graduate student Reneson Jean-Louis, later told CNN that the same student that called campus police on Siyonbola called the police on him, after he got lost in her building while trying to meet with Siyonbola and other graduate students.

The petition says Braasch, 43, "has also fought against laws restricting hate crimes."

It quotes a 2011 article she wrote for the blog Daylight Atheism titled, "Be Careful What You Wish For (Why I Hate Hate Crimes Legislation, But I Love Hate Speech)."

"I am pretty much the only person I know who hates hate-crime legislation as little more than bald-faced thought-crime legislation. I am not infrequently verbally vilified for asserting the claim that morality has no place in the law," she wrote.

The petition asks Yale President Peter Salovey and other school officials "to remove Braasch from Yale because her stated philosophy is one that violates the moral and intellectual codes of the university; because her multiple counts of harassment and racism against other students violates the safety of students of color.

"Students of color at Yale should not be re-traumatized by seeing Braasch on campus this fall. We also insist on a mental health evaluation for Braasch so that she can be prevented from doing harm to herself or others."

Braasch, Siyonbola, and a Yale spokesperson did not respond to requests from the Yale Daily News for comment.

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More than 2,900 people have signed a petition demanding the ouster of a Yale graduate student who called the police a black graduate student napping in a school lounge.
yale, petition, graduate, student, police
368
2018-11-24
Thursday, 24 May 2018 02:11 PM
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