Almost Trayvon: A Near Miss at Yale
On June 18th, 2015, framed by the semi-sweet scent of stale alcohol from Toad’s Place, and the smell of wine from Mory’s Clubhouse hanging heavy in the air, George finished his nighttime jog on Yale campus and in less than a few minutes had his gun drawn and leveled at two young Black men.
The gunman, George, alleges that he walked past the young men on the path between Toad’s and Mory’s and they started cursing and yelling at him. Not entirely sure what they were saying, George reportedly replied “What the fuck?”, at which point he claims the two teens ran at him and he was forced to draw his weapon in self defense.
Witnesses from Mory’s allege that there was a loud noise causing everyone on the path to look at the teens, including George. The teens then began yelling and cursing, telling George to keep walking, to which these witnesses allege George replied “Fuck you!” One of the witnesses from Mory’s claims the young men ran towards George and “seemed like they were going to do something to the guy.”
The two young men, Arryn and Miguel allege that while they were dealing with Arryn’s recent break up with his girlfriend, George turned around and yelled, “Fuck you!”. They report that they walked toward George and “told him to keep walking”, at which point George drew his gun.
The incident was declared an act of self-defense and for violating Yale’s policy on weapons on campus George was hit with a lifetime ban from Yale property.
Yet, the police report does not tell the whole story. There was a witness account from that night that was dismissed from the official narrative — my own. As a fourth year student at Yale, I have walked that path thousands of times and on that night, George was walking a few feet in front of me.
Here’s what I witnessed:
A loud noise made both George and I turn around; I saw that it was the guy whom I had seen earlier with his head in his hands and attributed his outburst to be the result of his emotional state. Essentially unbothered I continued up the path away from him as he shouted from his seat on the bottom step of the fire escape on the side of Toad’s Place. George and I both walked a few more paces before George stopped and declared “Oh fuck you!” He turned around to yell back at the young men, now approximately thirty feet behind me, “Shut the fuck up!” I continued walking, passed George after a few feet and had taken a couple steps on the path leading off to the right towards Morse College when I heard a voice shouting, “Why are you threatening my life? Why are you threatening my life?” I looked behind me and George, still standing in the place I had passed him, had his gun drawn as Arryn, now standing on the path near the fire escape, continued to shout his question. I backed up slowly so as to not draw George’s attention and ran inside the gate of the nearest residential college, Morse. I watched the tense standoff for a few seconds from behind the gate before moving away, understanding that despite my disbelief, there was in fact a gunman on Yale campus. I walked deeper into the college courtyard and called a friend; by the end of our thirty second conversation blue and red lights lit up the path I had just left and a small army of police engulfed the area. I went back out, friend at my side, relieved that the police had come so quickly and ready to tell them what I witnessed.
And yet, it was precisely then that my experience began to be dismissed from the official narrative. I spent thirty minutes trying to get an officer to listen to my account, to write any of my experience down. In that time, I spoke several times with one particular officer, a bald thirty-something white man who was firm yet kind in his dismissal each time I approached him; he told me to stand on the side of the path and wait for someone to come talk to me. No one came, and I approached the officer again and was met with the same response. After ten more minutes of waiting, I began asking every officer who walked past if I could tell them what I witnessed. One such officer responded to my request by informing me “the guy’s claiming self-defense”, shrugging, and walking away. My last resort was to invoke the privilege afforded to my status as a Yale student; I began telling officers “I’m a Yale student and I saw what happened” and it was only then did someone stop long enough to write down my information and also give me a form on which to write my official witness account. On the form I emphasized the distance between George and the two young men was too great to justify pulling a weapon in self-defense.
To compound the dismissive encounter at the scene, the Yale administration remained silent. There was no signature “Message from the Chief” that typically accompanies crimes on campus. It took three days of persistent emails and a nearly three hour face to face meeting with the Chief of Police, Ronnell Higgins, and the acting Master of Yale Summer Session, Joel Silverman, for there to be any official acknowledgement of the incident, which was sent to the summer students at Yale five days after the initial event.
And yet, even in this seeming victory my experience was again dismissed from the official narrative. Chief Higgins, despite not being present at the scene himself informed my family when speaking with them about their concerns about campus safety, that he knew definitively my account of the incident did not happen. Given there were no security cameras present to objectively capture the incident, all Higgins had to inform him were the accounts of responding officers who made a clear prioritization of the experience of the white man involved. As evidence to the dismissive nature with which my account was treated the official police report lacks basic information about my identity, listing my race as unknown when I present unequivocally as a Black American, a fact that an officer who had taken the time to engage with me directly would have been immediately aware of.
The Yale administration’s response to this event has been disturbing in several ways, the first of which is their hesitancy to take definitive action against a man who so egregiously violated the safety of Yale campus and New Haven residents, and could very well do so again in the future. Joel Silverman, the Dean of Morse College during the academic year and the acting Master of Yale Summer Session sent an email to the summer students informing them that an incident with a gun occurred on campus, emphasizing that the man had a legal permit to carry the gun, and that he was no longer allowed to return to Yale campus without express permission.
Despite the administration’s focus on George having a pistol permit, their argument does not acknowledge the other legal grounds for Yale to take action against him. In bringing a handgun to Yale Property, George broke the explicit prohibitions of weapons and firearms on Yale campus outlined in the Yale Campus and Workplace Violence Prevention Policy. Chapter 529 of the State of Connecticut General Statutes, section 29–28(e) states that a pistol permit “does not thereby authorize the possession or carrying of a pistol or revolver in any premises where the possession or carrying of a pistol or revolver…is prohibited by the person who owns or exercises control over such premises.” Yale owns, and exercises control over the premises where George chose to carry a semi-automatic KEL-TEC .380 caliber handgun. Yale has declined to comment on whether they will pursue bringing charges against him.
George’s testimony in the police report focused on the size and youth of Arryn and Miguel, and shares an unsettling similarity to those of white men who have shot and killed young black men in the past year: Darren Wilson, who claimed that Michael Brown was “like Hulk Hogan,” despite the fact that both men were 6’4; Tamir Rice, a 12 year old boy shot in the park for having a BB gun, was described in terms of his size, as though his frame could justify the use of lethal force.
The most troubling aspect of the Yale administration’s response to this event was the insistence that such an incident need not be reported to the student body. While, as Chief Higgins pointed out, the gunman himself may not have posed a “significant and ongoing threat” once he was apprehended and subsequently banned for life, such an argument ignores the broader implications of what happened that night. The impact of racially charged events like this one have been an ongoing threat to the Black community for years. To deny that this incident is part of the larger pattern of marginalizing and abusing the Black community is incorrect, and leaves Black students at Yale without the institutional support given to their peers.
In a series of increasingly disappointing interactions it took nearly a dozen emails and two separate meetings, first with Chief Higgins and later with Janet Lindner, Deputy VP of Human Resources and Administration before my concerns about the effects of remaining silent on incidents involving weapons on campus, regardless of the initial resolution, were validated. In a community where the minimum requirements serve as precisely that — the least that is acceptable but not what is expected of Yale students — it was offensive to find that the Yale administration was adhering to the minimum federal requirements and nothing more.
It’s time for the Yale administration to pop the “Yale bubble” and acknowledge the impact of stereotype driven fear on the lives of Black Americans across the country, including those in New Haven and at Yale. This incident, a near miss of a national tragedy, is an opportunity for Yale to break its official silence on social justice issues and distance itself from a history that has been marked by oppressive patterns of interacting with marginalized communities.
