It is “back to school” season. I know there are more than a few of my readers out there right now who are in mourning knowing that sometime this week they report back to the trenches for another school year as educators.
It’s not just the educators who are experiencing anxiety this week. Students and their parents are also feeling varying degrees of sadness or dread – with a bit of excitement mixed in – as they head off to begin a new school year.
I have a good friend who is sending his oldest son off to college this weekend. He told me he is really sad about it and said, “I’m sure you know how I feel.” I told him that I never experienced sadness sending the kids off to college. Until the tuition bill came. Then I was sad.
Anyway, there are lots of parents like my friend who are entering a new phase of life with the little ones grown and off to college and away from home for the first time. That can be anxiety-inducing for sure.
Now imagine that you were sending your child off to Yale. What an accomplishment. Your kid at the pinnacle, riding the wave of success. And as you are parked on Chapel Street in the Elm City, unloading the U-Haul and getting the kid squared away, you get handed a pamphlet, starkly drafted, with a drawing of the grim reaper front and center.
“Skull and Bones?” you wonder. No. It’s the Yale Police Department informing you that your child is unsafe just as you get ready to hand your A+ student off to the Ivy League.
You may have read about what is happening down in New Haven. The Yale Police Department is in contract negotiations with the University over a new contract. It seems as if negotiations may have reached an impasse.
As you know, I have represented police officers for over 25 years, including university security guards. On the occasions where those college security departments were in tense negotiations with their employers, we often talked about a strategy of pamphleting or picketing during move-in week or commencement week.
The idea is to let the broader community of parents and friends of students know the good work that the security department is doing to protect the students – including escorting students across campus; alerting them to threats both on campus and in the community; and being a friendly presence when it seems like parts of the world are falling apart. In a security department, there should be an emphasis on providing security for the customer.
And if you can successfully get your message across, the hope is that the broader community can help influence the employer to provide a fair contract so that the interests of the student and faculty community can be properly served by the security forces.
But down at Yale, the Police Department thought it was still stuck in 1975 and Fort Apache – The Bronx. Its pamphlet was designed to scare parents, students, and the broader community about ever venturing into New Haven. It seems an odd strategy since the allegedly unsafe community is supposed to be made safer by the police department. All it seems to have done is inflame every stakeholder against the police. And it has made the union look like a bunch of thugs.
That is not an effective strategy in 2023, and it is not an accurate reflection of what unions stand for in 2023. I hope the negative reaction is swift and clear and the union gets back to negotiating in good faith.
The Law Office of Eric R. Brown 
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