Two days after more than 1,000 students, faculty and administrators marched for racial justice through the streets of New Haven, the campus conversation on race relations at Yale University continued Wednesday night with an event called "A Moment of Crisis: Race at Yale."
The line for the event, which filled to capacity, stretched down the stairs and spilled onto the sidewalk. As of late Wednesday afternoon, more than 900 people said they had planned to attend the "teach-in" at the Battell Chapel on the event’s Facebook page.
News cameras weren't allowed inside, where hundreds of students gathered to talk about ongoing racial tensions at the university. Conflict has been brewing since students accused one fraternity of hosting a "white girls only" party and a lecturer pushed back against an email asking the student body to avoid culturally insensitive Halloween costumes.
"We’re very vocal. We’re very involved and we’re willing to take a stand in what we believe in," said Yale graduate student Elyse Galloway.
According to the event flier, topics of discussion included "valuing women of color at Yale," "mental health and its impact on communities of color" and "addressing white and male privilege."
"Hundreds of students here and thousands who will hear about it tomorrow both here and on campuses around the country will realize that racism is fight — something that we all need to fight," Yale graduate student Molly Zeff said.
The student organizer from the Afro American Cultural Center declined NBC Connecticut’s request for an interview before the event.
It comes a day after thousands of students, faculty members and staff took to the streets protest, and racially offensive signs was discovered on the university's Old Campus. Administrators would not comment on the content of the signs, but the Yale Daily News reports they "included references to black criminality, violence and acts of rape."
Dean Jonathan Holloway sent a campus-wide email Tuesday night condemning the signs. A university spokesperson said Yale police investigated and determined students weren't reponsible for the signs, but rather an "alternative comedy" group called "Million Dollar Extreme."
"The words were strong and scary enough that the students who saw it were shaken and scared," Afro-American Cultural Center Director Rise Nelson Burrow told the Daily News. "It’s bad that something like this would happen at a time when students are already so fragile."
Halloway and university president Peter Salovey sent a joint email to the student body Tuesday in support of diversity.
"We cannot overstate the importance we put on our community's diversity, and the need to increase it, support it, and respect it. We know we have work to do, for example in increasing diversity in the faculty," the email said, adding, "We also affirm Yale's bedrock principle of the freedom to speak and be heard, without fear of intimidation, threats, or harm, and we renew our commitment to this freedom not as a special exception for unpopular or controversial ideas but for them especially."
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In their email, Yale University officials said they hope to share steps to enhance diversity with students before Thanksgiving.
Students told NBC Connecticut they are pleased the administration is addressing racial concerns on campus.
About 13 miles north, at Quinnipiac University, associate professor of sociology Don Sawyer said such tensions "have been brewing for a long time within higher education."
He explained that protests at Yale — and elsewhere — have the power to enact change.
"Presidents of universities are listening now, it’s reactionary, students have been trying to tell them to be proactive but they haven’t been paying attention," Sawyer said.
