UPDATE, 7/26/2016: New Haven prosecutors have dropped all charges against Corey Menafee, who deliberately broke a one-of-a-kind stained glass window hanging in Yale’s Calhoun College.
Yale had requested that prosecutors drop the charges – the offered Menafee his job back earlier this week – but prosecutors only made the decision official on Tuesday morning. After a review of the evidence, attorneys determined that no one had been hurt by Menafee’s actions, save for one passer-by who was hit by a small shard of glass. Charges of endangering the public, they said, weren’t justified.
And while the window cannot be replaced, Yale says the month-long “unpaid suspension” Menafee suffered was punishment enough.
About fifty student protesters were on hand to hear the good news, but met the announcement with further complaints about Yale’s implicit racial bias. “Corey Menafee is our Rosa Parks of 2016,” one activist told the Yale Daily News, who called on Yale’s administration to change Calhoun College’s name (they have already definitively stated that they will not).
Only one anti-Menafee protester showed up: a white male who “declared Menafee a vandal” and said the decision to drop charges was indicative of “reverse discrimination,” according to reports.
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Yale’s Calhoun College has rehired cafeteria worker Corey Menafee, even though Menafee deliberately destroyed a priceless piece of stained glass in a political statement.
Menafee said the window, which showed slaves carrying cotton in the Old South, was “racist” and “degrading.” During an event, he decided he could no longer work under the window, and using a broomstick, knocked the glass out of its slot and it shattered on the floor. The window was one of several in a series, depicting scenes in the life of John C. Calhoun, the U.S. Vice President and Yale grad for whom Calhoun College is named. The window was created in 1933.
Menafee quickly apologized and resigned so that Yale would not press charges, but Yale’s students took on Menafee’s cause as a social justice crusade. In a series of protests and marches, Yale students demanded that Menafee be rehired, calling his act of destruction a work of “civil disobedience.”
Thousands of students and supporters signed an online petition asking Yale to “free Cory Menafee.” Comments on the petition thanked Menafee for his “service” to the Yale community.
White privilege is thinking that such imagery is neutral or just art. We owe Mr. Menafee a tremendous debt for acting from a dominated position to unmask and push back against such privilege and racism…
And some took Calhoun College to task for keeping the historic, one-of-a-kind windows up.
That racist image had no business being up in public where students, faculty, staff, employees and the public had to be exposed to it. Mr. Menafee should not have had to take that image down himself. Yale needs to break out of its Ivory Tower…
Some just didn’t like the art.
….that panel was some serious bullsh*t….
Some just didn’t like John C. Calhoun (though they didn’t seem to grasp that sentiment over Calhoun’s legacy has shifted greatly with time).
Mr. Menafee did right and nobody will miss that window. I’m more concerned about John C Calhoun’s crimes. He was a slave-owner, a genocidaire and imperialist, but what was he ever charged with?
A separate GoFundMe page was set up to cover Menafee’s legal costs. It raised around $24,000.
The school cited the “unique circumstances” surrounding Menafee’s actions as reason for inviting him to return to his job as a dishwasher at Calhoun College. A spokeswoman for the college told media that he had accepted and will return to work later this week.
The New Haven prosecutor’s office has not said whether they will drop the felony “malicious destruction of property” charges Menafee now faces, but Yale said they recommended that Menafee be let go.
Yale will commission an artist, skilled in stained glass, to gather input from the Yale community and design possible replacements for the Calhoun windows. The University is considering a long-term “contextual display” for the current artwork, but will work with students to decide on a long-term plan of action. Despite student protests, however, Calhoun College will keep its name as a reminder to students to “confront, teach and learn from slavery.”
