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OPINION SEPTEMBER 7, 2020 ¦ 37

as educational resources and specific actions they to our demands, which felt exacerbated by the fact
could take to begin or continue advocating for ra- that we were offered less than 12 hours to consider
cial justice. At the same time, we were preparing a this proposal and provide input. Presumably, YLS
list of demands to present to the administration, made a decision on this matter, but this has yet to
who had publicly accepted a “special responsibil- be communicated with YBLSA.
ity to exercise leadership in service of equality.” In response to our demand for faculty whose
On June 26th, YBLSA, with the support of many scholarship focuses on prison abolition, the school
peer student organizations, delivered that list of created a police reform clinic that legitimizes po-
demands. We called upon the administration to licing as a justifiable system of State violence and
offer long overdue educational programming on social control.
the relationship between U.S. law and white su- Then, after ignoring almost every one of our
premacy, to call on the University to defund and demands, the administration compromised and
divest from the Yale Police De- promised that educational pro-
partment, and to hire faculty gramming which centered the
who dedicate their work not voices of Black organizers and
to reforming the police, but to thinkers in this space would soon
abolishing the prison-industrial Our school has shown us come. We were encouraged by a
complex. time and time again that commitment that showed at least
they are more than willing a modicum of progress, until in-
The result?
An all-too predictable se- to engage in performative coming Black 1Ls alerted us in
ries of events in which the activism, offer wide smiles July that the Office of Student Af-
administration offered their and empty promises, write fairs was leading its own trainings
ears but refused to listen. We on diversity. They shared that
us eloquent paragraphs
were bounced from meeting to with meaningless words, the trainings were “incoherent
meeting, left to watch and listen and tried to make apologists feel
as administrators and faculty and claim to fight for comfortable over and over again
members gave empty promises equality, as long as it is by talking about how complicat-
and meaningless condolences. ed this moment is,” that there was
convenient for them.

In response to our demand “no structure, but rather [the YLS
to defund and divest from the staff that led these sessions] just
Yale Police Department, the ad- asked people to respond to buzz
ministration carefully avoided words and didn’t correct people
any meaningful discussion, citing the law school’s when they missed the mark,” and that “it truly felt
inability to make decisions in relation to YPD. like we (two Black women) were the only ones lead-
They offered to replace the two unarmed securi- ing the session.” As we predicted and warned, this
ty guards at the front door with receptionists—a hastily prepared programming left many incoming
plan they inconsistently described to other affinity Black students in the position of having to grab the
group leaders as being an explicit ask from YBL- reins of unstructured and incoherent discussions
SA, all while squarely ignoring our demand that and do the teaching themselves.
YLS call on President Salovey and the University On July 9th, our Dean sent a second message
administration to defund, disarm, and dismantle to the law school community regarding racism
the YPD. The move felt like a measure to placate and YLS. In the message, described as “Yale Law
Black students as opposed to a measure to respond
¦ Continued on PAGE 38

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