My name is Dante Motley, and I am the public editor for the News. Public editors are oversight officers who watch over a paper’s journalistic ethics. Much of the implementation of journalistic ethics is an internal process; I am here to ensure transparency for our readers and accountability to our community. Throughout the year, I will write columns and produce multimedia projects displaying our journalistic process, addressing how we have gone, and continue to go, wrong and explaining what steps we will take in an effort to do better.

I am a former managing editor of the News. I understand the daily challenges of running a daily paper and the hundreds of mistakes that can be made and are often avoided in a week. In no way am I here to place personal blame on any participant in the News, past or present. Still, I have seen us fall short. I have felt it. I know where to look. And I am here to look for and to patch up our institutional shortcomings: the declining trust of the student body in us, our continual failure to repair relationships with communities of color and the culture within the News itself that so many of our staffers find problematic and abrasive, to name a few. 

Internally, I work with the editor in chief, Anika Arora Seth, on matters of journalistic ethics. Together, we conduct reporter training for any member of the student body who wants to join the News — from first years to post-docs — to ensure that even our newest reporters are equipped with the skills to abide by the high standard we hold for our reporting. When the News faces backlash, I advise on our shortcomings, address them publicly and work with the News on implementing any necessary changes to ensure that when we make a mistake, it won’t happen again. 

Last month, Anika and I wrote a column together accompanying the release of a piece by a former News editor detailing the reasons why she left the News. While Anika and I wrote about upcoming changes to election procedures, we did not address the serious racialized component of the piece.  These often long-standing, dejecting proclivities within the News — and within journalism at large — are big and intertwined, and it is hard to get to everything at once. So, through a bi-weekly column, I hope to untangle the complex histories, procedures, cultures and mistakes that form a paper’s ethics and its relationship with the public. 

As an anthropology major — and as one who is a little annoying about it — I cannot conclude without the inclusion of a bit of ethnographic theory. Anthropologist Mary Douglass proposed in her book “How Institutions Think” that institutions, through a collectivity of thought, do the thinking for us. Still, she emphasizes, we are not devoid of individual responsibility as these institutions live on through our own selves and our own agency. 

The News is old. For decades, the only people with bylines pressed on our sheets were white men. And sadly, the spirit of that lives on in our institutions, not just at the News, but at Yale and beyond. Now it stands our responsibility to rebuke institutional thinking, acknowledge where our agency failed us and, most importantly, change. 

DANTE MOTLEY is a senior in Grace Hopper College and the News’ current public editor. You can contact him at dante.motley@yale.edu.

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As friends and peers, we above all want to recognize and validate the hurt the elections process caused Megan, as well as others involved. Nothing we say will appropriately acknowledge or make up for these experiences; instead of relitigating or making any excuses, we instead want to use this space to transparently discuss how the elections process here works, prior attempts to improve the system and some of our thoughts for future efforts. 

Across four years — in each News election during which we have been Yale students — the process has caused candidates and News members anguish. Given widening campus discourse around the subject, we feel it is important to quickly and directly take action.

Participants involved in the News’ elections for editorial positions consist of all outgoing editors and anyone who is running for a board position sitting together in a room. For each race, those running for that position leave the room. They are brought in individually to deliver a speech and to answer questions from the outgoing editor in chief and anyone else. The candidate then leaves the room before the whole group conducts a deliberation of the candidate’s merits, weaknesses and insecurities, moderated by the outgoing editor in chief and public editor. After this, the candidate comes back in for a brief response period where they are expected to address any remaining concerns.

The full day of elections, which involves positions from editor in chief and managing editors all the way to desk-level positions, can last all day. Last spring, elections began at 8 a.m. and went past 9 p.m.

But Megan’s column today, years of internal discussion and our own elections experiences demonstrate that this process can be irreparably harmful. 

The elections process has been subject to scrutiny before. The turmoil and tensions promoted during deliberations are often internally blamed for the eventual departure of staffers after losing elections. 

Following a tumultuous situation during the 2022 fall elections for last year’s board, News leadership made changes, which included introducing a response period and adding the public editor as a secondary moderator. As the News grows and changes, we have consistently strived to learn and do better. Clearly, those changes were not enough.

We, the editor in chief and public editor, began exploring new approaches to elections last spring, and we will continue this work throughout the semester in preparation for next term’s elections. Some of our ideas thus far include transitioning from a lengthy spoken deliberation period to preapproved written comments, fostering a more respectful environment within the room and stricter enforcement of the current ban on defamatory gossip. 

As a newspaper that strives to promote diversity in our newsroom and in our pages, we actively seek to build trust both internally and externally. We often fall short. Over the next few months, while we reevaluate our elections procedures, we welcome community input and hope to build a better newsroom. 

ANIKA ARORA SETH is a junior in Branford College and is the 146th editor in chief and president of the Yale Daily News. You can contact her at anika.seth@yale.edu.  

DANTE MOTLEY is a senior in Grace Hopper College and the News’ current public editor. You can contact him at dante.motley@yale.edu. 

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After the vehicle transporting him was abruptly stopped, causing Cox’s injuries, officers offered him little medical help at a detention facility, repeatedly dragging him into a wheelchair and later into a holding cell. The incident, captured in videos released by the city government, sparked local protests against New Haven police and the placement of five NHPD officers on administrative leave. 

Now, months after the incident, Cox’s legal team has announced its intentions to sue the city sometime in the following week, despite delays in a state-level investigation of the officers’ conduct that have pushed back the official suit’s filing.

“We had hoped that today we would have a finding by the state police on their investigation of these New Haven officers,” said RJ Weber, one of Cox’s lawyers, at a Sept. 15 vigil. “We had hoped those things would have been completed by now so that we could have a federal complaint filed and presented to you today, but due to those setbacks and those delays, I don’t anticipate that that lawsuit’s going to be filed for another week to ten days.”

The incident

On June 19, NHPD officers responded to a 911 call alleging a weapons complaint at a Lilac Street Block Party, then-Acting Police Chief Regina Rush-Kittle said in a June 20 press conference. Several officers stopped and arrested Cox following their investigation of the report, arresting him with charges of criminal possession of a firearm, carrying a pistol without a permit, threatening in the first and second degrees and breach of peace in the second degree.

Videos show an officer, Oscar Diaz — a member of the stop-texting-and-driving team the NHPD convened this spring — tapping on his cellphone as he drives the police van carrying Cox. He eventually made “a sudden stop to avoid a motor vehicle accident,” according to a letter released on Twitter by New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker. 

Cox, who was sitting in the back of the police transport van unequipped with seat belts, then slipped down horizontally and slammed into a metal wall of the van head first. The vehicle was going 36 mph — 11 mph above the speed limit — at the time of the sudden stop.

Diaz verbally checked on Cox after he was heard yelling for help. After Cox informed Diaz he had fallen and been severely injured, Diaz stopped the vehicle outside of Yale’s Schwarzman Center to come to the backseat. Again, Cox informed Diaz he had been injured, but Diaz told him he could not move him and called a dispatch for an ambulance before continuing to drive. 

When Diaz saw Cox slumped on the ground, he asked him, “How is your leg all the way up there?”

Eight and a half minutes after the incident, the two arrived at the detention center and were greeted by more officers. Diaz informed them that Cox said he fell and could not move, saying, “if he really, really fell, I would not even move him until the ambulance gets here, because just in case.” 

One officer captured on video said, “Just be careful, he was kicking the door, and everything else.” Another officer removed Cox’s handcuffs. After he attempted to move his legs, Cox insisted that he could not move and that the officers were not listening to him.

After officers repeatedly told Cox to slide himself out of the van, Cox replied, “Look, look, if you gotta drag me, do what you gotta do.” 

The officers then pulled him out by his feet and held him up by his arms, eventually placing him in the wheelchair. As a paralyzed Cox was ordered to slide himself out of the van, one officer, Betsy Segui, repeatedly yelled at him, telling him “you’re not even trying,” “he’s doing extra shit,” “move your leg,” “get up,” “sit up!” and “you just drank too much.” 

Cox slid out of the wheelchair a few times, saying he “can’t feel shit.” Cox was then processed by the jail. All the while, his head and neck slumped down against his shoulder and he remained immobile. He then partially slipped off the seat of the wheelchair again, before officers took him from the chair, dragged him into a cell by his arms and propped him against a bed. Cox then fell onto the floor. Officers shackled his ankles and Segui declared him “perfectly fine.”

None of the videos released show an ambulance arriving.

Police have offered shifting accounts of the incident over time. In an initial press conference held one day after the incident, Rush-Kittle told reporters that after being stopped by police, Cox was “uncooperative,” but in another press conference the following day, then-Assistant Police Chief Karl Jacobson ultimately told reporters Cox was “handcuffed without incident.” 

Rush-Kittle also initially told the press that the van only stopped in “an invasive maneuver to avoid a motor vehicle accident”; later, it was determined the officer driving the vehicle was speeding and looking at his cellphone. 

Although his condition seemed to improve in the months following the initial injury, Cox was re-admitted to the hospital last week. Elicker and Jacobson visited Cox the week prior.

“He has a fever that he can’t get rid of. It’s been really hard on him mentally, dealing with this situation,” LaToya Boomer, Cox’s twin sister, said at a Sept. 15 vigil for her brother. “At this point, he can’t even scratch his hair if it’s itching. He can’t wipe his eyes if he’s crying. He has no use of his fingers, he has a little bit of use of his arms, no movement from the chest down.”

As a lawsuit awaits filing, state police investigate

One of Cox’s lawyers, Jack O’Donnell, discussed his legal plan with the News, stating they are pursuing a claim against the city and are looking into civil rights suits. He also wants to take the issue further, pushing for laws that would prevent injuries like this from happening again.

“We need things like a medical Miranda warning where you have to ask if someone needs emergency medical attention provided if so requested,” O’Donnell said. “Making sure that all transport vans are retrofitted with seat belts so that someone can’t be thrown around.”

Yale Law Clinical Lecturer Jorge Camacho LAW ’10 told the News that Cox’s team will be able to pursue legal claims of injury easily, as there is strong evidence his injuries occurred as a result of the officers’ “at the very least negligent” actions.

“Everyone knows that’s coming,” Camacho said. “It’s just really a question of ‘what is the dollar amount?’ What is the compensation to Mr. Cox and his family going to look like?” 

During a June 21 press conference, Rush-Kittle announced that the Connecticut State Police will investigate “whether there is any criminal aspect surrounding the incident.” An Internal Affairs investigation within the NHPD has been halted until the state police investigation is completed. Although the officers involved have remained on administrative leave since the incident occured, Boomer told those gathered at the vigil that the officers should be “fired and arrested.” As of Sept. 21, the state investigation is ongoing.

During a June 28 NAACP community meeting, Jacobson told community members gathered that the Internal Affairs investigation will “do what needs to be done” if the state-level investigation does not. 

“We have fired other officers who have not done the right thing over the last two and a half years I have been mayor,” Elicker said at the meeting. “But we live in a system where people have rights, and we have to see this process through.”

NHPD officers have been fired and suspended for misconduct several times in the past few years. In April, one officer, Kenroy Taylor, was fired by the Board of Police Commissioners for “a pattern of untruthfulness and mishandling cases throughout 2020.” In August, former sergeant Shayna Kendall was fired for lying about her handling of a traffic stop to mask “road rage.” Christopher Troche, another ex-officer, was also fired this August after being arrested in November for patronizing a sex worker. 

Segui, for her part, was previously placed on administrative leave in 2020 after failing to send officers on required walking tours of the detention center she supervised — the night one person, De’Sohn Wilson, died by suicide in custody. Earlier, she and her officers refused to seek out medical care for Wilson after he arrived “visibly in pain” and requested to be taken to the hospital.

NHPD policy states that officers must immediately seek and wait for medical attention after someone in custody brings attention to an injury. Driving at 11 mph over the speed limit is also typically classified as an infraction of “traveling unreasonably fast” under Connecticut state law, and law enforcement vehicles cannot speed in non-emergency situations when sirens are not used. State law also prohibits using a handheld cellphone while driving. Camacho said that determining whether officers violated specific policy may help inform conclusions on their level of culpability.

“It’s harder to prove intentionality than it is recklessness, it’s harder to prove recklessness than it is negligence,” Camacho explained. “Once there’s an official finding as to what their level of culpability and involvement was, then there’ll be a determination made on discipline or even potentially termination.”

In a July 6 statement, U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut Vanessa Roberts ’96 said her office is “closely monitoring” the investigation and awaits the state’s findings. According to the statement, “if federal action is warranted, the Justice Department will pursue every available avenue to the full extent of the law.” According to Benjamin Crump, one of Cox’s lawyers, the team has met with the U.S. Department of Justice. 

Crump, popularly nicknamed “Black America’s Attorney General,” has helped litigate multiple civil rights cases. He was a lawyer for the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, which recently saw policeman Derek Chauvin sentenced to 21 years in federal prison, and he additionally represented the families of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown.

Camacho said that proving civil rights violations may be more challenging than pursuing a simple injury suit, as it is difficult to determine whether Cox’s injuries were sustained through officers’ negligence or intent before state investigation findings become public.

“Where they tend to intervene most is where there is a very, very clear civil rights violation that was incurred,” Camacho said.”And I think, obviously, the evidence here points to there being some kind of a violation of Mr. Cox’s rights, but the difficulty can be in articulating and proving what that right was and the responsibility the officers had.”

The state investigation may inform the lawsuit Cox’s lawyers will bring. At the Sept. 15 vigil, they announced they would need to wait another week to ten days before filing a federal complaint, as they had originally anticipated for the state to release its findings by now. Weber brought a draft of the lawsuit to the vigil. 

“It makes the claims against the individual officers for negligence in the operation of the motor vehicle; it makes claims against the officers for violating Randy Cox’s civil rights in the way that they handled him and manhandled him when he was in that detention center,” Weber announced. “We have claims against the city of New Haven.”

Community response to the case

During the NAACP community meeting, several speakers called for accountability among police and the legal system and criticized the NHPD’s relationship with the Black community. Beyond the new basic police reforms announced, they called for widespread changes to how both the police and “the white general public” — as termed by Michael Jefferson, Lead Attorney for the NAACP of Connecticut — treat Black people.

“If this society does not care about the general welfare of Black people and we are devalued as human beings … and if you believe as I do that we should expect no revolutionary changes in the mindset of the dominant culture in the immediate future, then all we have left is to build mechanisms of accountability to hold these individuals accountable for their actions — and I’m talking about the police, I’m talking about prosecutors, and if necessary, the judges themselves,” Jefferson said, drawing applause and calls of approval from the audience. 

Other speakers drew on the importance of community support and political mobilization among Black people. State House representative Robyn Porter called on those gathered to show kindness and solidarity toward each other, asking mothers to imagine what they would do if Cox was their own son. 

Crump and Cox’s family members also addressed those gathered. Boomer addressed the crowd solemnly as she expressed her disbelief with the officers’ treatment of her brother. 

Several times throughout his speeches at the NAACP meeting and Sept. 15 vigil, Crump and activists led the audience as they chanted, “Justice for Randy Cox!” At the vigil, Crump added that when Cox receives justice, “it’s good for New Haven, it’s good for America.”

A protest was also held July 8 in New Haven, where hundreds gathered to march for Cox. Crump hopes that Yale will continue to rally.

“I hope the students at Yale will do like other young students at colleges all across America, and take a stand for justice and say that we’re better than this,” Crump told the News. “So hopefully, our community will look at that video and they will be galvanized to say this is New Haven where we are located, and we want to send a message loud and clear that we are better than this video.”

Doreen Coleman, Cox’s mother, spoke at the Sept. 15 vigil. She announced that Cox needed the support of others in the broader community.

“Pray, sing, say hello — whatever you need to do,” Coleman said. “He can see what everybody’s saying, he’s got his own phone. We work the phone for him, so whoever wants to say hi, hello, how are you doing, whatever whatever, we’re the ones who respond with what he says.”

Reforms in police policy and culture

In the days and weeks following the incident, the city, state and NHPD moved to institute a series of reforms aimed at preventing similar incidents in the future. 

Immediately following Cox’s injury, according to Jacobson, the two NHPD police vans not outfitted with seat belts were ordered taken off the road. Previously, they had used hand loops on the walls of the vans as a means of security for handcuffed people under arrest. 

On Jacobson’s first day as NHPD chief shortly after the incident, the city announced a new set of standard operating procedure reforms and initiatives in a press release, including one sweeping order that took effect on July 3. One of its policies named police cruisers as the primary means of prisoner transport and required seat belts in all police transport vehicles.

 The policy additionally specifies that conveyance vans — like the one that carried Cox — may only be used with a supervising officer’s authorization for court transportation in special circumstances, or in instances with multiple arrests. 

The order also states that officers must not use cell phones or break the speed limit while transporting those in custody, despite state law having already established that police vehicles cannot break traffic laws while they are not using sirens. In a Sept. 15 update, Elicker and Jacobson also added that random body camera audits are being conducted in detention facilities.

A second policy established standard operating procedure in situations where medical attention is required. Officers must now ask those in their custody whether they are injured or in need of medical attention before they are transported and after they arrive at detention facilities, and officers must closely monitor their health during transport. The policy requires officers to immediately contact their supervisors and request an EMS dispatch if someone in custody reports an injury or asks for medical help. 

A Sept. 15 press release stated that almost all officers had completed a training on de-escalating “critical incidents.” During the month of Oct., officers will also be required to complete active bystander training. 

Aside from reforms, many have pointed toward changes in police culture. At the NAACP meetings, activists drew attention toward a culture of over-policing and mistreatment in Black communities.

“We are policed differently,” Jefferson said at the community meeting. “That’s the deal. That’s the bottom line. They go to a house in New Haven, and the neighbor calls the cops for an argument. Not only do they arrest one of the participants, but if a child is crying or screaming, they charge them with risk of injury. They go to a white couple’s house in East Rock or the Annex, no one gets arrested. And DCF is never called on them.” 

Elicker stated he did not believe there was a culture of police brutality in the NHPD at a June 28 press conference, but he described police culture as “hierarchical” and added that officers must be able to stand up to each other.

Crump, meanwhile, condemned police for a broader pattern of neglecting the needs of Black people, drawing parallels between Cox’s injury and those of police brutality cases across the nation.

“They didn’t believe George Floyd when he said ‘I can’t breathe’ 28 times,” Crump said at the NAACP meeting. “They didn’t believe Eric Garner when he said ‘I can’t breathe’ 19 times. And they didn’t believe Randy Cox here in New Haven when he said ‘I can’t move my arms.’” 

The NAACP was founded in 1909.

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Bethel-Macaire began her time as Af-Am House Director and Assistant Dean of Yale College on Aug. 8, filling a position that was left empty when former Dean and Director Risë Nelson transitioned to a role within Yale’s libraries.

“It feels amazing to be back,” Bethel-Macaire said. “It’s also strange to be back in this seat. I never imagined I’d be coming back to Yale, let alone as the director of the House.”

Bethel-Macaire has dedicated her career to addressing inequities within education. After graduating from Yale, she went back to her hometown of Chicago as part of Teach for America. Most recently, she was a Program Director at LINK Unlimited Scholars, a nonprofit supporting Black middle and high school students in the Chicago area.

While at Yale, Bethel-Macaire was a leader in organizations like Black Church at Yale, the Dominican Students Association, the Yale chapter of the NAACP, the Urban Improvement Corps and the Yale Black Women’s Coalition.

Bethel-Macaire was named Director after a lengthy interview process, conducted by a search committee composed of professors, students and a Yale pastor.

Her appointment was announced on July 27 by Dean of Yale College Pericles Lewis and Dean of Student Engagement Burgwell J. Howard.

“Mrs. Bethel is a lifelong learner and educator,” Lewis and Howard wrote in a community-wide email. “She lives by her high school’s slogan, ‘everything to help; nothing to hinder.’ She’s passionate about educational equity and providing people with the opportunities and resources necessary to be successful.”

Bethel-Macaire said that she hopes to create a high-energy atmosphere in the House. She recognized the ways COVID-19 has affected the ability for students to connect and aims to ensure students are able to easily re-engage with the House.

Bethel-Macaire also hopes to galvanize the House’s alumni network, noting the excitement among the alumni community during the House’s 50th anniversary, Af-Am 50, which she helped plan.

The experience of putting on such an event encouraged her to apply for the director position. Bethel-Macaire said that meeting students, and receiving encouragement from other alumni at the event, inspired her to take on the role.

“So much institutional knowledge has been lost because of the lack of activity over the COVID years,” Bethel-Macaire said. “So I am excited to connect student leaders with some alumni to get that knowledge and decide what pieces of that they want to use moving forward, and what pieces of that they want to leave in the past. 

“My goal is not to make the House the House that it was in 2011,” she added. “I want it to be the House that current students need it to be.”

Since arriving from Chicago on Aug. 8, Bethel-Macaire said she felt like she is “running in a million different directions,” but is ready to help figure out how the House, and the University more generally, will take shape after the pandemic.

She says the doors of the House are open to anyone who wants to learn about, celebrate and appreciate the aspects of the African Diaspora.

Leleda Beraki ’24, Yale College Council president and member of the House’s student engagement team, said that in her few interactions with Bethel-Macaire, she has seen “her desire to make all of us feel heard.”

“It’s amazing to see administrators who have been in our shoes now working to make our experience better,” Beraki wrote to the News. “She’s a genuine and down to earth person who I know will help create a vibrant space for Black students.”

The Afro-American Cultural Center was established in 1969.

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After a two-year delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the House is celebrating its golden anniversary with an expected 500 guests during three days of mixed in-person and virtual panels, events and receptions. The weekend’s programming is titled “Renaissance & Revolution: Celebrating 50 Years of the Afro-American Cultural Center’s Legacy at Yale & Beyond.” 

“It truly will be a blessing to reconnect after all the distancing that the pandemic has required,” Dean Risë Nelson, former director of the Af-Am House, wrote in an email to the News. “Really, the entire weekend will allow our newer students to finally be able to fully experience (and our older students, alums, and community to re-experience) the House as most of us have known it throughout its history—engaged, impactful, connected, and alive!”

The event was planned by the Af-Am House’s 50th Anniversary Planning Committee, which is made up of a variety of community member volunteers.

In a March 28 panel discussion, Nelson said that she and the committee have been working on this event since 2017, and she has been envisioning the celebration since she first took up the role of Af-Am House director in 2015.

“The 50th anniversary is a monumental event in the history of the House,” Sheryl Carter ’82, a co-chair on the planning committee, told the News. “It provides us the opportunity to both reflect and be aspirational.  Understanding the challenges that were overcome and the sacrifices that were made over the prior decades will allow us to understand and more fully appreciate where we are today.  It will also create space for us to consider the original goals and aspirations of the Founders of the House and assess how much farther we, Black Yale, still need to go in order to reach those goals.”

The vision for the event, as proclaimed on the event’s official website, includes honoring the Af-Am House’s legacy and highlighting community members’ contributions to academia, the professional world, arts, politics and culture. 

The weekend will see a wide range of in-person events — with the majority live-streamed — as well as six prerecorded sessions, Nelson told the News. The entire weekend will feature around 50 speakers in total.

“It’s been really rewarding to just be able to see the things that the house has done over the years, and the many alumni that are doing great things that are going to be brought back because of the event to speak at the event, run panels and just be a part of it,” Amara Mgbeik SPH ’23, who worked on communications for the celebrations, told the News. “So it’s been great to see that institutional memory in a sense come alive.”

The event kicks off with a Yale Black Alumni Welcome Reception at 4 p.m. on Friday, followed by a celebration of the arts later that evening at 7 p.m. 

That celebration includes a panel of alumni discussing their experiences in the arts and reflecting on the importance of art. That will be followed by a showcase of student arts groups from the Af-Am House and other cultural centers.

“I think it’s also really exciting to see these people in person,” said Yamil Rivas ’24, who will emcee the celebration of the arts. “I feel the pandemic made nothing, or anybody, be real in a Zoom call …. and I’m really looking forward to and glad to see these people’s work be thoroughly and properly acknowledged and celebrated.”

Saturday will see a plethora of events. Some highlights include a talk by Cara McClellan ’10 LAW ’15,  attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, tours of the Schwarzman Center, a mixer and a panel on the importance of teaching and studying Black history. The day will also include an intergenerational conversation between alumni spanning from the class of 1970 to the class of 2019.

Saturday night will end with the traditional Bouchet Ball and Awards Ceremony, where students and alumni get to meet and celebrate each other’s achievements.

“I’m so excited for the Bouchet Ball because it was something the Black community has always had and it’s literally been nothing but a myth,” Rivas said. “I’m a junior and so much of Yale has been nothing but a myth. I think during the pandemic these parts of the cultural centers were the first to go, and I am really, really, really excited that [the Af-Am House] is finally getting the celebration that it deserves.”

The awardees are being recognized for a wide variety of work, from Albert Lucas’ ’90 contributions to New Haven and urban youth to Zora Howards’ ’14 writing and performance abilities.

One of the many awardees is Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee ’72 of the 18th Congressional District of Texas, who will be receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award.

On Sunday, there will be a service recognizing those in the House community that have passed on, followed by a Black Church at Yale service and a farewell brunch.

“It’ll just be a great time to bring people together and kind of remind us that we’ve come this far by faith,” Mgbeik said.

The Af-Am House is located at 211 Park St.

Update, April 29: This article has been updated to include mention of the live-streaming of events as to clarify the extent of the virtual aspects of the AFAM50 celebration. 

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Pennington was prohibited from officially enrolling due to an 1832 Connecticut law; however, he was able to sit in on lectures as long as he did not speak in class. Noah Humphrey DIV ’23 recently wrote an opinion piece arguing for the University to award Pennington a posthumous honorary degree. The University has previously rejected requests to award Pennington a regular degree, and Associate Vice President for Institutional Affairs Martha Schall outlined that Yale has a policy against awarding posthumous degrees. Still, Humphrey has continued his advocacy to get Pennington a degree. Now, Dean of the Divinity School Gregory Sterling is sympathetic to the effort, which has gotten bogged down in the upper administration.

“Are we going to allow the law to stand in the way of Pennington getting a degree?” Humphrey said in an interview with the News. “Are we going to continue to be the barrier that separates Pennington and his life work away from being awarded a simple degree, done by the institution that has first housed James Pennington, essentially locking him out of our own doors?”

Pennington had a long, prestigious career, including the publication of the first African American history textbook in 1841, and later the receipt of an honorary doctorate by Heidelberg University in 1849. 

There have been prior pushes to award Pennington a degree, including a 2016 petition with over 500 signatures, but all attempts were either rejected or went unacknowledged by the University due to its policy against awarding posthumous degrees. This policy was reinforced by the fact that the Divinity School is unsure which courses Pennigton took — including if he completed any degree requirements. 

“Yale has a policy to not award posthumous degrees,” Sterling wrote in an email to the News. “I have not tried to change the policy, but to find a way within Yale’s policies to get him a degree.”

Sterling said that he tried on two occasions — unsuccessfully — to get Pennington a degree: first, a Master of Divinity degree, and then a Bachelor of Divinity. He added that he has a “different strategy at present” and has not given up hope that Pennington will one day receive a Yale degree.

Apart from the degree, the Divinity School has honored Pennington by renaming S100, one of the school’s largest classrooms, after him. The school has also hung a commissioned portrait of him in its common room.

“The Honorary Degrees Committee has a longstanding practice that honorary degrees are not granted posthumously,” Schall wrote in an Oct. 11, 2021 email to the News. “The only exceptions, including Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, are in the sad circumstances in which the recipient accepted the invitation to receive the degree, agreed to the requirement that he or she attend Commencement to receive the degree in person, but died between the acceptance of the invitation and the Commencement date. Therefore, the committee would not be open to considering a nomination for Reverend Pennington.”

Humphrey frames his efforts as both independent and collaborative, noting that the student organizations he is a part of are supportive of his efforts. He hopes to use his unique position as a member of both the Black Men’s Union — an undergraduate student organization — and the Black Seminarians — a graduate student organization — to reach more students who might be interested in the advocacy work. 

Humphrey has already partnered with another student, Meredith Barges DIV ’23, in advocacy to get Pennington a degree. Barges said she is trying to “right the injustice” of Pennington having been treated poorly during his time at Yale.

“It is just a matter of rules which are really ridiculous,” Barges said. “Because there’s always going to be a first, right? There’s always going to be a first person who’s going to receive a posthumous degree as a form of reparation. And I think there is a really, really compelling argument that it should be Pennington.” 

Humphrey said that he trusts that Sterling and the broader Divinity School understand the importance of awarding Pennington a degree, and proposed the upcoming Afro-American House’s 50th-anniversary celebration from April 29 to May 1 as an opportunity for the issue to be further discussed. 

The Yale Corporation has awarded honorary degrees since the commencement of 1702.

Correction, April 23: This article has been updated to better reflect the speech patterns within Meredith Barges’s quote.

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Brian Burkett-Thompson and Kristen Threatt, the founders of New Haven business Eat Up Catering, recently launched the fresh fruit flavored lemonade brand. The drink has been met with an overwhelmingly positive reception.

“It actually took off quicker than what we expected,” Burkett-Thompson said. “I see a big future for the lemonade, just to be a mainstream drink out here. That’s the purpose. It’s gonna be doing it. Bring some community and make it a global and international phenomenon, that way, all over got a little taste of New Haven.”

The duo opened their catering business in 2019, with Burkett-Thompson, a Cook’s Helper in Commons and a chef at Eat Up Catering, contributing his culinary experience and Threatt contributing his marketing skills.

The pair also runs the Eat Up Foundation, a non-profit organization whose goal is “to work with the people and organizations in our local community to help feed those in need,” according to their website. Threatt said their work includes giving back to children for school, giving back to senior centers, feeding the homeless for Thanksgiving and giving them gift bags for Christmas. 

“Before we even started the business, we wanted to do things to change community lives and that was the first and foremost thing,” Burkett-Thompson said. “Then we jumped into having our own business.”

Burkett-Thompson, whose brother is also a chef, was inspired by his father, another chef, who passed away in 2014. He hopes to inspire a new generation, especially those who might not have a goal, to “do what [they] are good at.”

Threatt moved to New Haven in 2012 during what he described as a “rough patch in [his] life.” He said that he made changes in his life and now hopes to inspire others to do the same.

“It’s the idea that most guys want to be basketball players, football players … and not a lot of them are saying that they want to be cooks,” Threatt said. “But we create a wave where we make it so dope to the point where we have clothing, food, drinks and doing community work all mixed in together, you know?”

Threatt said that children will not forget the community work they are doing and will want to grow up to do so as well.

According to Threatt, the two of them originally wanted to make a drink because of community requests for them to serve drinks with their food at Eat Up, as they did not want to serve commercial sodas or soft drinks. 

“They love lemonade,” Burkett-Thompson said. “I mean, to the point that like I got people personally calling me for their own packages of lemonade — 24 here, 40 over there — and these are people at their own house that want these 40 lemonades. So they showed great support.“

The pair originally came up with the idea, Threatt said, for a gorilla-themed brand as a sort-of joke because Burkett-Thompson is a “very hairy dude,” and they wanted to impart his traits into the drink and branding. Yet the brand name has come to symbolically mean more.

Threatt explained that as two Black men, they had to choose to “define what gorilla means” in order to avoid any negative connotations or stereotypes. He looked it up and decided to use a gorilla in a way that symbolized “surprising strength, intelligence and gentleness.”

Their lemonade is currently carried at five locations — including 96 Howe St. and Petals Market at 100 Ashmun St. According to Threatt, more than 3000 bottles have been sold since their debut at the end of March. 

Yasmyn Ursini, an employee at Petals Market, said that they sold out in the first two weeks of carrying the product, after “a lot of people saw it in newspapers and Instagram.” Although she is not sure if they will restock the product, she said many people have been asking for it and believes there is a good chance they will.

“The goal for us is to get [our lemonade] into Yale University,” Threatt said. “We would love to have our drink in Yale University for college kids because the college kids are the culture. They are going to school, getting an education and everything, so we want them to have some real refreshing drinks.”

Burkett-Thompson said that as a culinary employee for the University, he notices the students get tired of the same drinks and hopes to be able to bring something of his own to diversify those options.

A bottle of Gorilla Lemonade costs $3. 

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