Paul Bass Photo
Yale welcomed prospective students and their parents Tuesday with a speech from the president — and flyers from picketing union members about a scary crime in the dorms.
University President Peter Salovey delivered the 1 p.m. “Bulldog Days” “welcome address” inside Woolsey Hall with the aim of convincing students admitted to the undergraduate Class of 2022 to pick Yale over other schools.
Outside Woolsey, members of Yale’s 71-member police union picketed to protest the lack of progress in negotiations over a new contract. The cops have been working without a contract since June 30, 2016.
The picketers handed students and parents headed in to Salvey’s speech “Welcome Prospective Students” pamphlets with an inserted “Breaking News Alert” flyer headlined: “HOME INVASION — ROBBERY INSIDE YALE’S TIMOTHY DWIGHT COLLEGE.” The flyer recounted in extensive detail how two Yale students entering a Timothy Dwight College dorm room at 1:30 a.m. Monday encountered an intruder who pointed a handgun at them, then fled. It turned out the man had broken into numerous dorm rooms.
Students and parents politely took the pamphlets, then continued into Woolsey for the speech.
Yale’s drew criticism for its reaction to a similar union protest outside an April 7 “Bulldog Day” event, at which its crew raced onto the sidewalk and snatched pamphlets out of visitors’ hands and “wedged” themselves between picketers and parents. The union drew criticism from some Independent commenters for potentially dissuading people form attending Yale by playing up crime.
The reactions of students and parents interviewed on their way into Tuesday’s speech suggested that Yale needn’t worry about losing top students because of the protests. Not one expressed any new concern about enrolling here.
In fact, the union protest made Yale more attractive in the eyes of Katherine Du (pictured), an accepted student from Virginia.
“It’s really nice to see,” she said of the pickets. “There’s a lot of social activism on colleges campuses,” which she welcomes.
Du had already heard that New Haven has “security issues.” That doesn’t bother her, she said: You find the same problems pretty much everywhere. “It’s really nice to see” the police union protest, she said.
Raul Madrid and Paloma Diaz took a flyer on their way into Woolsey from Beinecke Plaza. It reminded Madrid, Yale Class of 1985, of the big strike by (now-UNITE HERE) Local 34 to win a first contract while he was a student here. The fact that unions are taking on Yale would in no way discourage him from sending his daughter here, he said. “Every campus has its problems,” agreed Diaz. The campus where she and her husband work, for instance, the University of Texas at Austin, is battling a state legislative mandate to maintain an “open carry” gun policy.
“I hope they get a [contract] soon,” said Steve Chun of Orange County, California, whose daughter has been accepted to Yale. “There’s always been contract negotiations. They need to protest.”
“I’m in a union too. I’m kind of sympathetic with these guys. We’re negotiating a contract too,” said Joyce Gibson, on her way in to Woolsey with husband Chuck. She’s a member of the California Nurses Association. The Gibsons said the protest had no impact on their decision whether to send their daughter to New Haven.
Yale Police Benevolent Association President Richard Simons (at right in photo) said the university and the union had had 54 negotiating sessions on the new contract, but only two since Jan. 1. He said the outstanding issues include:
• Life insurance: the union wants members to receive $50,000 worth, above the current $25,000. The union says the current level is the lowest in the Ivy League.
• Retiree health insurance: Yale wants newly hired cops to start paying premiums the way other university employees do. “If we’re going to give that up, we want something back,” he said.
• Caps on how long after an incident occurs that people have to file civilian complaints against cops. No such limit now exists. The union is asking for 60 days.
Yale spokesman Thomas Conroy released a statement saying the university has proposed “significant” security and disciplinary protections; annual base pay increases of 2.75 – 3 percent over six years, which would “make Yale police officers among the highest paid police officers in the state”; increasing allowed shift swaps from three a year to two per month; lump-sum special severance payments for cops over 55 with at least 20 years on the job; and clothing and cleaning allowance and SWAT/hazardous duty differential increases.
The police union has filed an unfair labor practice charge against the university before the National Labor Relations Board for the leaflet-grabbing incident at the April 7 protest. Conroy claimed that Yale instructed its personnel not to interfere with picketers that day.
Tuesday’s picket was fueled by a stack of pizzas. “Picketing makes me hungry,” remarked one member as he took a slice.