Yellow Light School

Yale University

Yellow light colleges and universities are those institutions with at least one ambiguous policy that too easily encourages administrative abuse and arbitrary application. Read more here.

Public or Private: Private
Federal Circuit: Second Circuit
Head of Institution: President Richard C Levin
Yale University
President's Office
P.O. Box 208229
New Haven, CT 06520
203-432-2550
richard.levin@yale.edu
Website: http://www.yale.edu

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Do you have any information, updates, or changes regarding the policies at this institution? Let us know!

On this page, FIRE has excerpted policies that address speech and expression. You may download the full policy in .pdf form, below.

Restrictions on Expressive Rights

Harassment Policies (Learn More)

Yellow light: Undergraduate Regulations: Student Complaint Procedures- Complaints of Racial or Ethnic Harassment 12-13

[R]acial or ethnic harassment is considered to occur when any individual is subjected to arbitrary, capricious, or discriminatory treatment on the basis of race or ethnic origin.
View full policy (PDF, 132 KB).

Yellow light: Sexual Harassment: Guide for Faculty, Students and Staff 12-13

"Hostile environment" harassment is
unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature that creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive working or academic environment and has
the purpose or effect of substantially interfering with the victim's work or study. Hostile environment sexual harassment can
include sexual advances, repeated taunts
regarding sexual preferences, taunting jokes
directed at a person or persons by reason of
their sex, obscene posters with sexual connotations and sexual favoritism in work
assignments.
Depending upon pervasiveness
and severity, conduct that may be
considered sexual harassment includes the
following:
* Unwanted sexual advances
* Unwelcome sexual comments
* Remarks about an individual's body or
appearance
...
* Unspoken sexual innuendo such as voice
inflection when complimenting appearance
or gazing at parts of the body other
than the face.
* Repeated requests for dates
* Sexual jokes
* Unwelcome sexual gifts
* Sexual assault
* Display of sexually oriented objects, photographs,
posters, pictures or cartoons
View full policy (PDF, 159 KB).

Green light: Sexual Misconduct Response at Yale: Definitions of Sexual Misconduct, Consent and Harassment 12-13

Sexual harassment consists of nonconsensual sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, or other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature on or off campus, when: (1) submission to such conduct is made either explicitly or implicitly a condition of an individual's employment or academic standing; or (2) submission to or rejection of such conduct is used as the basis for employment decisions or for academic evaluation, grades, or advancement; or (3) such conduct has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual's work or academic performance or creating an intimidating or hostile academic or work environment. Sexual harassment may be found in a single episode, as well as in persistent behavior.
View full policy (PDF, 92 KB).

Internet Usage Policies

Yellow light: Information Technology Appropriate Use Policy 12-13

Harassing or threatening use. This category includes, for example, display of offensive, sexual material in the workplace and repeated unwelcome contacts with another.
View full policy (PDF, 379 KB).

Other Speech Codes

Yellow light: Undergraduate Regulations: General Conduct and Discipline 12-13

The Executive Committee’s jurisdiction includes offenses described in the Undergraduate Regulations as well as other actions on the part of students that may in the judgment of the committee warrant disciplinary action because they may imperil the integrity and values of the Yale community or the well-being of its members.
View full policy (PDF, 311 KB).

Advertised Commitments to Free Expression

Green light policy: Undergraduate Regulations: Free Expression, Peaceful Dissent, and Demonstrations 12-13

Above all, every member of the university has an obligation to permit free expression in the university. No member has a right to prevent such expression. Every official of the university, moreover, has a special obligation to foster free expression and to ensure that it is not obstructed.
The history of intellectual growth and discovery clearly demonstrates the need for unfettered freedom, the right to think the unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable.
For if a university is a place for knowledge, it is also a special kind of small society. Yet it is not primarily a fellowship, a club, a circle of friends, a replica of the civil society outside it. Without sacrificing its central purpose, it cannot make its primary and dominant value the fostering of friendship, solidarity, harmony, civility, or mutual respect. To be sure, these are important values; other institutions may properly assign them the highest, and not merely a subordinate priority; and a good university will seek and may in some significant measure attain these ends. But it will never let these values, important as they are, override its central purpose. We value freedom of expression precisely because it provides a forum for the new, the provocative, the disturbing, and the unorthodox. Free speech is a barrier to the tyranny of authoritarian or even majority opinion as to the rightness or wrongness of particular doctrines or thoughts.
View full policy (PDF, 172 KB).

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The speech codes and policies above were last fully checked via internet and other research means by FIRE in March 2013. According to FIRE’s research the substantive policies are current at least until this date. Directory information, including the name of the president of the college or university, may have been updated more recently. If any policy has been revised, or if you believe that we are in error, please contact us.