Yale University issued an apology after a white student called police on Lolade Siyonbola, a graduate student in African Studies, because she fell asleep in a common room of her university dorm. Siyonbola posted incident videos on Facebook.
Yale is apologizing after a black graduate student fell asleep in the common room of her dorm — and found out that another student had called the police on her.
According to Yale Daily News, the school sent out a message to graduate students and teachers that called the situation “deeply troubling.” The email from Kimberly Goff-Crews, university secretary and vice president for student life, also said that responding police “admonished the complaining student that the other student had every right to be present.”
Lolade Siyonbola, a 34-year-old graduate student in African Studies, told The New York Times that the incident happened on Monday night while she was laboring over a “marathon of papers.” Siyonbola said she took a nap in her dorm’s common area for a little break.
The grad student said she woke up when another student turned on the room’s lights, CNN reported.
“You’re not supposed to be sleeping here,” the student allegedly warned. “I’m going to call the police.”
Siyonbola posted two videos on Facebook that detail what happened.
The first one shows Siyonbola talking to a woman, identified as philosophy doctoral student Sarah Braasch, who says “I have every right to call the police, you cannot sleep in that room.”
The woman continues to record Siyonbola, who tells her to “get my good side” before heading down an elevator.
The second video, which lasts 17 minutes, starts when the police arrived.
Police told Siyonbola that they received a call about “somebody who appeared they weren’t… where they were supposed to be.”
She responds by offering to open the door of her room to show that she lives there — but police say they need her ID.
Siyonbola hands over her identification, but it takes the officers some time to verify that she is allowed to stay in the dorm, the video shows.
“I am not going to justify my existence here,” the student says. She added that “I deserve to be here; I paid tuition like everybody else.”
“We determine who is allowed to be here or who’s not allowed to be here,” an officer responds, “regardless of whether you feel you’re allowed to be here or not.”
According to CNN, it turned out that Siyonbola’s name was misspelled in the student database, which caused the delay. Officers verified that she was indeed a student at the university and left.
Those videos racked up more than 1 million combined views and 10,000 shares on Facebook.
Goff-Crews told students in her email that the school is looking to use meetings with student leaders and listening sessions to better improve racial sensitivity at the school and hopefully avoid similar situations in the future.
“We still have so much more to do,” the email said, according to Yale Daily News. “All of us in senior leadership recognize that incidents such as this one are being framed within a difficult national context.”
A spokeswoman for the university told The New York Times that police had just “followed procedures.”
Siyonbola wrote on Facebook that she knows her experience is far from unusual.
“Black Yale community is beyond incredible and is taking good care of me,” she wrote. “I know this incident is a drop in the bucket of trauma Black folk have endured since Day 1 America, and you all have stories.”
