As he pulled his luggage through downtown New Haven, Conn., a woman handed him a flier describing his new city as crime-ridden and dangerous. It listed alarming local crime statistics and instructed students to “remain on campus,” “avoid public transportation” and “stay off the streets after 8 p.m.” Illustrated with a picture of the Grim Reaper, the flier wished students an ominous “Good luck.”
But perhaps most jarring was the source of the flier, listed plainly in its text: the union that represents Yale’s own campus police.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/25/nyregion/yale-police-fliers.html
A much shorter flyer would be “We are the Yale police and if we don’t get a significant raise - we ain’t doing our jobs. Careful walking around at night and sleep tight!”
The top comment…
Historically, New Haven is one of the poorest communities in the state when ranked by median income, while Yale’s endowment grew to $42 billion this year. Universities typically do not pay property taxes, the major income for cities. Yale does give stipends to New Haven in the form of direct cash and scholarships, but is it enough, given its enormous wealth?
How much better off would the citizens of New Haven be if they had the property taxes for all the land and buildings the Ivy League school owns? How much better would the public schools be? The libraries? The parks? City jobs? This reeks of income inequality.
