Even in the heat of summer, when the streets of downtown New Haven have emptied of students, Yale can’t escape the clutches of controversy.
The most recent incident in the long-running saga of Yale’s Calhoun College, named after the former South Carolina senator and vice president John C. Calhoun, comes at a time of national racial tensions that only heightens the sense of drama. Calhoun, who served as vice president under John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson in the early 19th century, was famous in his day for his staunch advocacy of slavery. Months of student agitation to change the college’s name came to naught this spring when Yale refused to do so. Corey Menafee, a black man who worked as a dishwasher in Calhoun College, smashed a windowpane in the college’s dining hall that depicted two slaves carrying bales of cotton on their heads. According to his remarks in the New Haven Independent, he acted on an impulse and climbed up with a broomstick to smash the panel. He was promptly arrested and has now resigned from his job; he says that Yale agreed not to press charges if he resigned.
Yale is keeping its part of the bargain, but that probably doesn’t matter to Menafee right now, because the state is doing what Yale refused to do. Despite Yale’s stance, Connecticut is charging Menafee with a felony and a misdemeanor, leading to a progressive outcry over the incident. Charging Menafee with a felony might seem harsh (convicted felons lose voting rights), but it is in compliance with the letter of the law: In Connecticut, first-degree criminal mischief, the felony with which Menafee is charged, involves property damage in excess of $1,500 (which, if you ask me, seems rather low for a felony charge, but the law is the law. The window he smashed was worth at least that much). Yale’s administration, ever the butt of criticism from student activists, does not support the criminal charges, is not seeking restitution, and seems content to sever ties with Menafee. Yale is also removing from the common room other stained-glass windows that depict scenes from the life of Calhoun.
None of that, of course, has stopped the usual brigade of progressive crusaders from defending Menafee, to the point of demanding that he be rehired by the university whose property he destroyed. “Thank you for taking down racist imagery,” read one sign hoisted by demonstrators outside the New Haven courthouse where Menafee appeared earlier today. According to another protester, Yale must also “stop exposing workers to racism,” whatever that means and however one might go about it. John Lugo, a frequent activist in New Haven, has said that Yale should rehire Menafee. In a statement reported in the New Haven Independent, Lugo asked, “What is more valuable to Yale: a stained glassed window of enslaved people picking cotton, or the humanity of the African American people who work at Yale?”