A Yale University student who called the cops on a student in her dorm and became the subject of harassment after the story was reported as “napping while black” says racism was not what motivated her to call police.
The College Fix reported that Sarah Braasch, a philosophy graduate student at the school, had earlier called police on a student (who was black) “whom she believed was not authorized to be in her dormitory building, after which she said she was subject to a small amount of harassment in her dorm building,” the Fix reported.
Braasch then had a conversation with another black student, Lolade Siyonbola, in the common room of the dorm and became convinced that Siyonbola was one of the students who was harassing her. A Freedom of Information Act request from the Fix revealed a post-hearing brief that said, “the purpose of the encounter” was due to Braasch becoming “concerned that the sleeping person was among those who had been harassing her.”
The brief also said Braasch’s “unrefuted testimony shows she did not call with the purpose of having Ms. Siyonbola arrested or criminally charged,”
The incident occurred last May, and Braasch received harassment on a national level thanks to racial activists. Braasch’s harassers even demanded she be crimally charged, the Fix reported. For her part, Siyonbola used her newfound victim platform to demand, along with other Yal students, that Braasch be expelled.
“Campus officials publicly condemned the incident. She received death threats. Eventually she fled campus and has not returned, continuing her education from an unnamed southwestern state,” the Fix reported.
Braasch emailed the Fix on Tuesday, saying she is now seeking to release the police body cam footage from the incident, which she says will clear her name after being called a racist.
“I feel strongly that the footage, which I will immediately release to the public … reveals that the Yale Administration and Police told disgusting lies about me. They knew the entire time that I was entirely innocent, and they knew that they were telling disgusting lies about me, grossly violating my Federal Civil Rights by doing so, and they knew that they were putting my life in grave danger, destroying my lifelong human and civil rights academic and legal careers, and probably driving me to suicide, which they almost did,” Braasch said in the email.
“Yale is trying to claim the exemption that the body camera footage contains uncorroborated criminal allegations. This is simply false. The allegations in the video are neither uncorroborated nor criminal in nature,” she added.
On December 31, Braasch posted an essay on Medium saying that she would “never have a career in academia now,” because of the viral campaign against her. Still, she remained hopeful that “the decision of the CT FOIA Commission Hearing Officer will be in my favor, and the world will get to see how the Yale Administration and Police told disgusting lies about me.”
“I will never stop fighting for vindication and justice. I will never stop fighting for everyone whose life and career have been destroyed by false accusations and the moral outrage industry,” she added in the essay.