So reading and watching the reports about the Yale student that had the Yale police called on her, I thought it was "strange" that the complaining student was so adamant about the fact that the offending student was sleeping in the common area. It seemed to me that there must be some rule that she knew about that the offending student was breaking rather than some random "you can't sleep here because I don't like it." Of course there were no reporters asking about what the rules are in regards to common areas in the dorms so
I looked them up. Here's
Yale's official dorm policies as it regards common areas:
Common Rooms
There are common rooms in each building for social and academic gather- ings. Every resident has access to these spaces and equipment. Residents must respect the established community standards regarding the use of the space.
I'll stop here briefly. If it were just this comment, then we could say that there was a social conflict in that the "established" order was that there is no sleeping in common areas. But that "rule" not being "official" could be subject to change if the "community" decided that it was OK. But then we have this:
You may have a guest stay with you for a 3-day, 2-night period occasionally. All guests are to sleep in student rooms, not in common rooms or any other space outside of the student’s room. Keys are not issued to guests.
So here's the kicker. While the offending student is
not a guest, it is still the case that sleeping in common areas is prohibited. I see no reason why the sleeping rule would apply ONLY to guests, as if resident students are expected to just lay about whenever the feeling hits them. Imagine a student with a guest who allows the guest to sleep in their room while they, the resident, sleeps in the common room. That certainly would not fly.
So it seems that in reality the complaining student was enforcing the rules as written by Yale and the offending student was at fault. Now we can argue as to whether it was a "call the police" event, but the offending student
was at fault. Furthermore, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that it may be the case that this was not the first time the offending student was seen sleeping in the common area. It certainly would explain the escalation by the complaining student this far into the semester.
But this is another example of an institution, in this case Yale, throwing someone under the bus for enforcing its own rules. And shame on reporters for not asking whether there was an actual rule against sleeping in common areas.
