Yale University has accused its police union of cynically terrifying first-year students about crime with incendiary ‘grim reaper’ leaflets.
The flyers were handed to freshmen students at the New Haven campus this week and urged them to get off the streets by 8pm, avoid public transport, never walk alone and never leave the university grounds.
Featuring a death’s head skull and touting itself as a ‘survival guide’ the handout claims that ‘the incidence of crime and violence in New Haven is shockingly high, and it is getting worse’.
The university said the flyers were ‘misleading’ and police slammed them as ‘disgusting’.
Yale Police Chief Anthony Campbell claimed that the flyers were handed out as a union tactic during contract negotiations.
‘It was really scary, it was alarming,’ freshman Isabella Caltitla told Fox61 after receiving the flyer while moving in on Sunday.
New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker slammed the leaflets as ‘childish and selfish’, at a press conference on Tuesday.
The Daily Mail reported that the union defended the tactic insisting that there is ‘no dispute on the facts’.
‘I think they feel an obligation to make sure that students don’t fall victim to crimes while they’re attending Yale University,’ spokesperson Andrew Matthews told Fox61
