New Haven’s 1,373 newest downtown residents arrived to their new lodgings Friday morning welcomed by friendly cops, blaring music, free fruits and water — and a notice that they’re about to live amid a labor-management showdown.
Traffic was at a near gridlock along Elm Street from Park Street to the Green as Yale’s freshman class arrived to move into dorms.
The town was ready. New Haven police sent out an advance survival guide for New Haveners coping with the annual day of disruption. An extra 12 city cops were assigned to help Yale cops keep things moving and calm through 2 a.m., according to Lt. Rob Criscuolo. Rather than have families park on both sides of Elm Street unloading belongings and tying up traffic, the city posted no-parking signs along the north side of Elm to add an extra traffic lane, and blocked off the southernmost traffic lane (which gets clogged with parkers no matter what the rules) for unloading.
Officers were observed rolling with the flow, greeting confused drivers with a smile and directing them to their destinations.
The freshman class’s members hail from all 50 United States as well as 50 foreign countries, according to a Yale release.
Yale staffers and members of student groups jammed the sidewalks to greet the freshmen and their parents Friday morning. So did a platoon from UNITE HERE, whose Locals 33, 34 and 35 are engaged in an increasingly contentious conflict with the university. The conflict — over the elimination of unionized jobs; over upcoming negotiations over new contracts for blue-collar and office workers; over race; over efforts to unionize graduate student teaching employees; over the parking policy for employees; over the university’s tax exemptions — sparked numerous protests on campus over the spring and has entered multimillion-dollar fights in city government, where UNITE HERE supports a majority of the Board of Alders.
UNITE HERE members handed out water bottles and flyers to the new students. The flyer noted that Yale has had 13 years of labor peace. (Before that it had at least seven bitter strikes in under four decades.) It previewed the on-campus issues and enlisted the students to sign up to a text-messaging list.
Within hours, the car traffic would dissipate. The campus and city tie-ups promise to continue, along with the students’ education in labor-management relations.
Calhoun, For Now
Students also stumbled on another sign of tension between the university and community on their move-in day. A couple of dozen community members stood in front of Calhoun College at noon, protesting the university’s decision to keep the residential college’s name, which comes from slaveowner and prominent slavery advocate John Calhoun.
Community activist Barbara Fair said the group — largely made up of local non-Yale organizers — has rallied in front of the college every Friday from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. for the last couple of months. This time a few students joined, lining up on both sides of Elm to oppose the Calhoun name. (Click here for a story about another recent rally.)
“It will be much bigger” when students and staff return to New Haven and get settled in, Fair predicted. Much of the Yale community has been protesting since Yale President Peter Salovey decided not to change the name in April. He argued it would “obscure” the history of slavery instead of “addressing it.” Since a controversial incident this summer involving the arrest of an African-American Calhoun cafeteria worker, Salovey has convened a new committee to consider the renaming question again.
In the same correspondence to students last April, Salovey announced he was changing the term “master,” used for heads of residential colleges, to “Head of College.” In a welcome ceremony for students, Morse’s Catherine Panter-Brick introduced herself “Head of College” for the first time Friday morning, for instance.
It's just unfair to confront freshman with labor issues on their first day. We can't let these students know that actual humans are doing the work at Yale. They're young, and they still believe that fairies clean their bathrooms and cook their meals, and that's the way it should stay!!
Yale students are here in New Haven for 4 years to learn from books and professors, not from the real world! So don't disturb them with real-world issues that affect their neighbors in New Haven. Keep them in the bubble!