Yale is offering to rehire a dishwasher who smashed a stained glass window depicting slaves in a cotton field, but he reportedly won’t return until the university meets his conditions – including removing other racist imagery.
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Corey Menafee says he destroyed the window inside Calhoun College in New Haven, Connecticut, last month because he found it offensive.
The college, which is named for the former U.S. Vice President John C. Calhoun, has been the target of student protesters who wanted to see the name changed because of Calhoun’s history as an ardent 19th-century defender of slavery.
“We are willing to grant his request for a second chance at Yale”, Director of External Communications Karen Peart said Tuesday in a statement.
Menafee would have to serve a five-week unpaid suspension, including time since his resignation on June 21.
“We are willing to take these unusual steps given the unique circumstances of this matter, and it is now up to Mr. Menafee whether he wishes to return to Yale”, Peart said in the email.
Menafee’s lawyer, Patricia Kane, said in a statement later Tuesday that Menafee “is delighted to accept Yale’s offer” and will report for work at 11:30 a.m. Monday.
Menafee’s resignation sparked protests at Yale, an online petition demanding for charges against him to be dropped and a GoFundMe campaign that raised over $24,000 for the former dining services worker.
Menafee, however, said he and his representatives are still “at the beginning stages of negotiating” with the university and he has “nothing concrete, nothing to confirm” an agreement to return to Yale, according to the school’s student newspaper the Yale Daily News.
Menafee, 38, had been a dining hall worker at Yale for eight years when he broke the window into 27 shards of glass, according to court documents.
“It’s 2016”, Menafee said.
“I mean, looking back at the situation, it was a very juvenile thing to do”, he said about the incident.
“I would love my job back if it were offered to me”, Menafee told NPR. “We are now waiting on a draft agreement from Yale and will continue to stand with Mr. Menafee until he is back at work”.
“That was the language that they used”, Menafee told the Independent. The name of the residential college has sp…
He has not entered a plea and his case was adjourned until July 26.
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“Yale has to decide which is more valuable: a stained-glass window, or the dignity and humanity of the black people who live and work at Yale”, Megan Fountain, an alumna and organiser of the rally to support Menafee, told The New York Times last Tuesday.
