Black Yale student fell asleep in common area and white student called police

'I deserve to be here,' Lolade Siyonbola says as officers question her for 15 minutes

Police officers at Yale University quiz Lolade Siyonbola after a white student called police, having found the graduate student asleep in a common room (Lolade Siyonbola)

A white woman called police after finding a fellow graduate student, who is black, asleep in a common area of their Yale University campus dormitory.

Lolade Siyonbola, who is studying for a master’s degree in African studies, was asked for identification even after she used her key to unlock her bedroom during the encounter with three officers.

The woman who reported her said she had found an “unauthorised person in the common room”, according to university authorities quoted by The New York Times.

Ms Siyonbola posted two videos of Monday’s encounter on her Facebook page, including part of a conversation with the white student who told her she was calling police after finding her on a sofa in the room at Yale’s hall of graduate studies on the New Haven campus.

After questioning Ms Siyonbola for more than 15 minutes, police confirmed she was a Yale student who lived in the building and then left. Police told her the confrontation was prolonged because her name was not spelled correctly in a database of student information.

Ms Siyonbola did not immediately respond to emails and messages on social media requesting comment. She expressed gratitude on her Facebook page for “the love, kind words and prayers” she has received.

“Black Yale community is beyond incredible and is taking good care of me,” she wrote.

“I know this incident is a drop in the bucket of trauma Black folk have endured since Day 1 America, and you all have stories.”

The videos showed Ms Siyonbola telling officers the woman who called them had also called police several months ago on a friend who had become lost in a stairwell of the building.

Ms Siyonbola, who showed police she had a key to her room and later provided them with her ID card, accused the officers of harassing her.

“I deserve to be here,” she said in the video. “I paid tuition like everybody else. I am not going to justify my existence here. It’s not even a conversation.”

In one of the clips, an officer told Ms Siyonbola: “We determine who is allowed to be here or who’s not allowed to be here, regardless of whether you feel you’re allowed to be here or not.”

Lynn Cooley, the dean of Yale’s graduate school of arts and sciences, sent an email to graduate students on Tuesday telling them that Ms Siyonbola had every right to be in the building and inviting them to share their concerns about the incident.

“Incidents like that of last night remind us of the continued work needed to make Yale a truly inclusive place,” she said.

“I am committed to redoubling our efforts to build a supportive community in which all graduate students are empowered in their intellectual pursuits and professional goals within a welcoming environment.”

A spokesman for Yale told the Times that “we will be reviewing the call and the response of the police officers to ensure that the proper protocol was followed, and to determine if there was anything we could have done better”.

The encounter followed several high-profile instances of police being called to confront people of colour in seemingly innocuous situations, including in coffee shops, a golf course and an Airbnb flat.

Additional reporting by AP