June Chu is a dean of Yale’s Pierson College (a position that involves leadership of a residential college, not an academic deanship). For weeks now, Yale students have been circulating some of her Yelp reviews that denigrated various groups. Her comments frequently didn’t focus on the restaurant she was commenting on, but on groups of people she saw there, on which she offered her criticism. For example, in a much-quoted review of a restaurant (above) she wrote, “If you are white trash, this is the perfect night out for you.” In a review of a movie theater, she praised the “lack of sketchy crowds, despite it being in New Haven.” In a review of another movie theater, she wrote about “barely educated morons trying to manage snack order for the obese ….”
The Yale Daily News, which broke the story, has published a selection of the Yelp reviews here.
When the story first broke, and Chu apologized to her students, Yale seemed to regard the incident as unfortunate, but not necessarily career altering.
As the week went on, however, more and more Yelp reviews by Chu, containing insults, materialized (many of them promptly shared on social media), and Yale’s position changed. (Chu has taken down her Yelp account but is not commenting.)