Yale Daily News

In order to increase campus safety, I immediately request that President Levin direct Chief Perrotti to provide for a system under which faculty and off-campus students who have met state requirements may carry their lawfully owned firearms for self-defense purposes on campus.

It is ridiculous that law-abiding Yale students (especially we grad students, who typically live off-campus) are permitted by the State of Connecticut to bear concealed firearms throughout the State, but cannot set foot on Yale's campus with them.

Don't even argue about "not feeling safe" and the straw-man of "increased likelihood of acts of passion by armed students" . . . EVERYTIME you go to Wal-Mart, or J. Crew, or Borders, to a gas station, you are very likely to be side-by-side with a law-abiding citizen who has chosen to go armed.

http://concealedcampus.org/

how about emails when students get hit by a car?

minh tran said at the aldermanic debate that at least one student has been killed each year since he started at yale. that is freaking ridiculous.

yale people are very often hit by cars and seriously injured. the ydn doesn't cover it. a law student was practically killed in front of starbucks recently and it never made the paper. perrotti doesn't send out an email. so people have a false sense of security and a false perception of where the actual dangers lie.

Until he starts reporting descriptions of the attackers, these emails are pointless and will never lead to anyone getting apprehended. Oh wait, I forgot, at a "progressive" school like Yale, multiculturalism trumps personal safety.

Interesting that President Levin apparently intervened to reduce the impact of potentially negative publicity if the crime stats were to gain too much public attention.

I read the emails and forward them to friends who do not receive them. It's helpful to know what's going on in our environs.

I agree with the below commenter. If Perrotti and Highsmith were serious in apprehending the criminals, their most identifying characteristic, their RACE, would be stated. Instead, it's some ambiguous description like, "the criminal had a red hat and black jacket." Get over the PC crap! If you are serious about wanting to apprehend the thugs, tell us the race (be it white, asian, black, indian, etc.)! It would help narrow down the list of candidates if you could match it to the other items of description...

Previous commenter:
"Until he starts reporting descriptions of the attackers, these emails are pointless and will never lead to anyone getting apprehended. Oh wait, I forgot, at a "progressive" school like Yale, multiculturalism trumps personal safety."

can anybody explain to me why it never says the race of the assailant? other than sex, that is the most important description.

how is including this "not pc"? acknowledging someone's race is politically incorrect? if so, do we value this more than safety?

Again, it sounds from the story as though President Levin intervened in the process to insure that the reports would be as unprovocative as possible, tracking the minimum federal reporting requirements in a dry and boring fashion.

It was interesting to me (and interesting when it showed up in my email box) how Perrotti has chosen exactly one acquaintance rape (i.e. student on student crime) to pass along, due to the possible "serial nature" of that particular incident. Why not a summary of the numbers of cases reported per year?

Perrotti uses race on occassion but he was asked by students to not use race in his emails when doing so does not provide a helpful description of the suspect. This conversation occurred after he sent out an email a few years ago describing a suspect as a Black male in his late teens or early twenties (that was the only description given). I hope we can all agree that emails like that are not only useless, but they do more harm than good by labeling a large number of Yalies and New Haven residents as suspects. I hope there's no need to explain why that is a huge problem.

Since then it seems like he has struggled to figure out when he should use race in his alerts - sending emails with the suspect's height, build, clothing, unique features like a scar and yet no race (which would have been helpful); as well as sending an email describing a suspect as a Black male wearing a Black coat and a beanie in December (not so helpful). I'm sure there are programs that offer training on these sorts of things and I hope that he seeks them out and attends.

So there are programs that offer training in applied political correctness?

Respectfully, race *always* provides a helpful description of the suspect. It tells you what race the suspect is!

"A black male wearing a black coat and a beanie" is not a very good description. But it's unarguably a better description than "a man wearing a black coat and a beanie."

Are you saying the only options are to provide a complete and distinguishing description or to include no description at all?

Although that seems a little ridiculous at first glance, I don't think I would mind a lack of descriptions. An incomplete description probably won't help the police apprehend a suspect, and there's some chance, however small, that it will lead to false identifications.

But I don't think that this has anything to do with race. Political correctness be damned. If the available description is not efficacious, just don't include it.

1.
For the record: We all (including Explanation himself) can agree that E.'s begging a few questions at 10 and that he's speaking for Yale and New Haven people whom he doesn't represent. (And that I'm begging a question by speaking for you, E.)
2.
To E. (at 10 para. 1) and to Right, Durgeon, and Anon. (at 3, 6 & 11): Relevant in part to all of your comments?
"REACTIONARY applies to wishes to return to an older outworn order ... <both the Reformation and the Counter Reformation were reactionary>." Webster's 3d Int'l Dict. (2002).
3.
E.'s point (at 10 para. 2) about training programs is a helpful one. Here's the uniform, modernized, racially, ethnically, and politically correct lexicon used by most municipalities (including New Haven?) in nearly every Suspicious Person description listed in their police blotters:
WN, WH, BN, AN, BH, AH, ...
The most common profile?
WN, 17-19.
-- An MIT Crime Club "Campus Crimestopper" award goes to the ethnically sensitive Eli who first deciphers the acronyms! --
~J.K. Herms

Is the N for "non-Hispanic"? Because then the letters could all stand for White, non-Hispanic; White Hispanic; Black non-Hispanic; Asian non-Hispanic; Black Hispanic; and Asian Hispanic respectively.

13, you got me stumped, what does WN stand for?

Look down at the feet ( not in disgrace)
but quickly get a description of the sneaks, they usually don't throw them away like a tee shirt

In 2006, the Census Bureau began using this new (more correct?) set of terms for its six race+ethnicity categories:
"non-Hispanic White" (formerly WN)
"Hispanic"
"non-Hispanic Black"
"non-Hispanic Asian"
"non-Hispanic American Indian or Alaskan Native"
"non-Hispanic Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander"
U.S. Census Bureau, Accuracy of the Data p. 12 (2007), http://www.census.gov/acs/www/Downloads/ACS/accuracy2007.pdf

Hispanics, the largest minority group, are underrepresented at every most-selective university other than MIT and Stanford. (Yale's a distant third.)

Any Catholics in your admissions office? If not, is "PC" the right description?

J.K. Herms
MIT Crime Club

I agree with #10 post: "by explanation"

Not knowing the race keeps all of us vigilant and always aware of our surroundings- regardless of who the potential perp may be.

Yes, race will help better apprehend a suspect if we were all crime-catching law-individuals, but instead we are just citizens trying to stay safe, and our anxious suspicions will only cause us to start looking at a certain race differently when we see them. It would be a common self-defense mechanism to be weary of all whites b/w 17 and 21 if that is the most common description given in the Perrotti reports.

Heaven forbid an email goes out of a non-white suspect… that would only cause more harm then good for that sector of students. Yes, clothes can be discarded quickly (agree with #16- yes, tell us about the shoes!)…but, we are just being informed of the crimes- we are not be charged to apprehend the suspects- only report suspicious activity- on ALL individuals, regardless of race.

To Race Is Not a Factor, at 18:
"[...] we are just citizens trying to stay safe." So many interesting questions begged! :\
My (natural but rebuttable) presumption is that you're not one of the 420 Yalies in the highest risk category, namely, a nonresident alien.
Think of the University from a global perspective: What if the wrong prince gets killed?
Back to 1914???
More empathy, please. For your OWN protection (and your property's), try identifying with the victims, and with the perpetrators too ...
... YOU are an 18-year old punk cruising the campus for a new bicycle. That one over there's been spray-painted already, flat blue. As a matter of professionalism, do you even contemplate stealing it?
... You've pedaled home on someone else's new wheels -- and with a new wallet! While trolling the Web, do you bother checking out how you're being represented by the YPD? (In case you feel like going back?)
_Cf._ Cheryl Vossmer, MIT Police Bulletins, http://web.mit.edu/cp/www/bulletins.htm
Suspect Descriptions [1-6]:
: male, light skinned [Black] ....
: male, white, late teens to early twenties, 6' or taller, [noticeably thin] build. Suspect was wearing ... black Saucony brand sneakers and was riding a bike.
: four males, black, 20-25. All suspects were wearing black puffy jackets and black hats.
: two males, black, 19-20, approximately 5'9" tall.
: male, white, 18-20, 5'7" to 5'9", thin build, brown hair with front spiked up, brown eyes.
: male, white, 30, 5'10", graying hair, ... large tattoo on back of neck reading "IRISH".... Suspect has a long history with MIT Police and knows the campus quite well.
These from the least racist (selective) university as measured by enrollment of underrepresented minorities.
(Note: Test scores aren't a factor in the equation. E.g., Yale has more Hispanics AND more non-Hispanic Blacks than Harvard; it also has higher SATs.) http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/default.aspx
~J.K. Herms
MIT Crime Club

I must agree with #18. As someone who used to work in law enforcement, I've seen first hand that there are very good reasons to not report race. Mostly reactionary morons who decide to play cop when they see a "likely suspect". If you're a professional trained in the recognition and apprehension of criminals then such identifying characteristics can be useful. Otherwise, as a citizen you should be careful of all people who fit the general description, regardless of whether they are a prior offender. Race is rarely a simple or useful system of categorization these days anyway. I'd say this set of comments alone justifies the decision.

I too find the alerts useful, as someone who doesn't live in the more heavily protected part of the city. I forward them to other off-campus folks who do not get them otherwise as well.

A general "police blotter" type column in the YDN might be a more representative solution?