Miss. Lolade Siyonbola, a Nigerian studying at Yale University, has drawn public attention to an embarrassing racial profiling she experienced in the hands of a fellow student who called the Campus police on her.
Miss. Siyonbola claimed she was taking a nap in the students’ common room when a white student she identifies as Sarah Braasch called the Police to come and arrest her.
She said that the encounter wasn’t her first with the racially-biased Sarah Braasch.
In her Facebook post, Siyonbola narrated how Sarah Braasch, who is studying Philosophy at PhD level, once called the Police on one of her (Lolade) friends a few months earlier.
She said the friend had got lost in her (Lolade’s) building, apparently when the friend paid her a visit. “Today, she messed again — with the wrong one,” Miss.Siyonbola posted.
“The lady called police because I was studying and sleeping in the common room. She’s done this before.
“Black Yale community is beyond incredible and is taking good care of me. I know this incident is a drop in the bucket of trauma Black folks have endured since Day 1 America, and you all have stories.
“Grateful for all the love, kind words and prayers, your support has been overwhelming,” she said in her subsequent posts.
The 34-year-old Miss. Siyonbola, a postgraduate student of African studies, said the Police later asked her for identification, which she provided.
“I’m not going to justify my existence here. I really don’t know if there’s a justification for you actually being in the building. I deserve to be here. I pay tuition like everybody else,” she said to the officers, after establishing her enrollment.
Miss Siyonbola also unlocked her dormitory room door in front of the officers to show she lived there after they insisted on seeing her ID.
“We’re in a Yale building and we need to make sure that you belong here,” one of the police officer said in the video.
The officers said the encounter lasted longer than expected because Miss. Siyonbola’s name appeared differently in the school’s database.
In reaction, the dean of Yale’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Lynn Cooley, said in an email to students on Tuesday: “Incidents like that of last night remind us of the continued work needed to make Yale a truly inclusive place.”
Watch Miss. Siyonbola’s video below:
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