A dean at Yale has been fired after leaving reviews on Yelp that recommended a restaurant for “white trash” customers.
Dr June Y Chu was appointed as dean of Pierson College, Yale, in May 2016. Chu posted a number of reviews on Yelp that have now been published by The Yale Daily News.
The reviews caught the attention of Pierson students who circulated them around.
“If you are white trash, this is the perfect night out for you!” she wrote in one review for a Japanese restaurant, published under the name June C.
In a review for a cinema, Chu discussed criticised its concession workers: “So what they have is barely educated morons trying to manage snack orders for the obese and also try to add $7 plus $7.”
Chu deleted her Yelp account and sent an email to the college community apologising.
“I have learned a lot this semester about the power of words and about the accountability that we owe one another,” Dr. Chu wrote, according to the college newspaper. “My remarks were wrong. There are no two ways about it. Not only were they insensitive in matters related to class and race; they demean the values to which I hold myself and which I offer as a member of this community.”
Dr. Chu was placed on leave last month but on Tuesday, the head of Pierson College’s administrative office, Stephen Davis, confirmed in an email to students that Dr. Chu will not return as dean. “I write to let you know Dean Chu has left her position at Pierson College and wishes the best to the students,” Dr. Davis said. “As a result, I am initiating the process of the search for a new dean, who will be in place before the start of the fall term.”
Davis had said in a message in May that Chu had assured him and others “that she had posted only two troubling reviews on social media.” However, Davis later discovered that she was “in fact responsible for multiple reprehensible posts, enough to represent a more widespread pattern. The additional posts that surfaced compounded the harm of the initial two, and they also further damaged my trust and confidence in Dean Chu’s accountability to me and ability to lead the students of Pierson College.”
Chu was scheduled to teach a sophomore seminar in September 2017 entitled, “Perspectives in Asian American Psychology.” The class is aimed to explore Asian-American identity issues and influences.
