Lolade Siyonbola’s exasperated message to the campus police officers— and to the Yale graduate student who’d summoned them to her dorm — was simple and consistent:
She didn’t have to do anything to prove that she was justified in being there, just because she happened to be black.
“I deserve to be here. I pay tuition like everybody else,” an annoyed Siyonbola told responding officers after they repeatedly asked her to hand over identification. “I’m not going to justify my existence here.”
It was part of a tense, racially-tinged exchange that the African Studies student had this week with four police officers and the graduate student who called 911 after she found Siyonbola napping in the Hall of Graduate Studies’ 12th floor common room.