Daniela Brighenti Photo
Menafee Tuesday outside the Elm Street courthouse.
Corey Menafee wants his job back.
The African-American cafeteria worker — who resigned after smashing a stained glass panel in Yale’s Calhoun College depicting slaves carrying bales of cotton — said he left voluntarily only because the alternative looked far worse: jail time.
Menafee told the Independent in an interview Wednesday afternoon that he resigned on the condition that Yale would not contest his unemployment benefits or seek restitution for the damaged windows — a clause he mistakenly understood to mean the university was promising not to press a felony charge on which Yale’s police arrested him. (That charge is now likely to be dismissed, according to Supervisory Assistant State’s Attorney David Strollo.)
“That was the language that they used,” Menafee said. “From that I concluded that they would drop the charges.”
“I put myself in a position either to be fired and try to appeal for my job after being fired, and just resigning and having the charges dropped and moving on with my life,” Menafee added. “The one I chose seemed more attractive at that time.”
But that was before his case exploded into public view on Monday, when an initial story in the Independent generated national headlines and provoked an impassioned online campaign for him to be rehired.
“It would be great to have my job back, definitely wonderful,” Menafee said Wednesday afternoon. “But I made this thing very complex.”
The window, pre-smash.
Yale Vice President for Communications Eileen O’Connor declined to comment Wednesday on whether there is any chance Yale might rehire Menafee. Yale has called for the charges against Menafee — second-degree reckless endangerment and first-degree criminal mischief — to be dropped.
In a statement, UNITE HERE Local 35 President Bob Proto said the union would support an effort for Menafee to be reinstated.
“Facing termination and worrying about providing for his family, Mr. Menafee chose to resign; the union stood with Mr. Menafee through this terrible ordeal, and we will stand with him again if Yale is willing to discuss a pathway for Mr. Menafee to return to a Yale University job,” Proto said.
Menafee — whose case has reignited an ongoing debate about the future of Calhoun College, named for infamous slavery proponent John C. Calhoun — appeared in New Haven Superior Court Tuesday as demonstrators rallied to support him outside the courthouse. He has not entered a plea.
Judge Philip A. Scarpellino continued the case to July 26, because the prosecutor did not have a copy of the resignation agreement between Menafee and the university.
Outside, on the courthouse steps, Menafee, accompanied by his lawyer Patricia Kane, told reporters that her client believed he had resigned as part of a quid-pro-quo agreement with the university not to press charges against him. At the time, Kane, who met Menafee for the first time the morning of his arraignment, had not seen a copy of the agreement.
According to O’Connor, Yale contacted the office of the State’s Attorney Tuesday morning to request that the prosecutor drop the charges against Menafee. She denied that Yale made the request in response to the public outcry about the case, and said the university had planned not to pursue the charges since before the date of the arraignment. (It is up to the state’s attorney, not Yale, whether to pursue or drop criminal charges once Yale police have made an arrest.)
O’Connor said that the university worked closely with Menafee’s union, Local 35, to hash out an agreement on his resignation. She emphasized that the agreement does not include a quid pro quo provision promising the charges would be dropped.
Outside the courthouse Tuesday, Kane told reporters that Menafee did not want his job back, because Yale had become a negative work environment. But in an interview Wednesday, she said she had been mistaken.
“He did say to me immediately after, ‘I do want my job back.’ He likes his colleagues, he likes working there,” Kane said.
“I don’t think it was his intention to embarrass Yale University in any way,” she added. “He liked his work.”
New Details Emerge
Meanwhile, a report filed by the Yale Police Department, posted online by Buzzfeed, revealed new details about the incident.
According to the report, Menafee told officers he was alerted to the presence of the racially charged panels by an alumnus attending a reunion event with his young daughter in early June.
On June 13, Menafee was moving boxes in the dining hall when he climbed atop a table and began battering the panel with a five-foot-long broomstick whose head he had removed in order to expose a metal screw.
Shards of glass sprayed as far as two feet into the roadway on Elm Street. Maria Keyes, a woman walking past the college at the time of the break, approached Dining Hall Manager Gina Gentile to report the incident, which she said sent shards scattering onto the sidewalk near her.
“She wanted to report it to someone because she was afraid someone could have been hurt,” the report states. “Fortunately, as of this writing, there have been no reported injuries due to flying glass.”
Gentile and Dining Hall Manager Samuel Feliciano — one of two people in the dining hall who witnessed the incident — alerted Yale Police, who arrived at the scene about 20 minutes later to gather evidence and interview Menafee.
Asked whether he might destroy other property he found offensive, Menafee replied, “I can’t predict the future,” according to the report.
Menafee later met with Gentile, Yale Human Resources Generalist Christine Hayden, and Local 35 Steward Tyisha Walker for “a brief discussion about the work ramifications of this incident,” the report said, that ultimately resulted in a resignation agreement.
Community Support Continues To Build
Co-worker William General at the pro-Menafee rally outside the courthouse.
Menafee — who has a communications degree from Virginia Union University, a historically black college — has always wanted to be a journalist.
He hasn’t achieved that goal yet. But over the past couple days, Menafee has become the subject of a viral story covered by media outlets across the globe.
“I haven’t really come to grasps with everything,” he told the Independent Wednesday. “It’s funny to me how fast, how rapidly, everything, the supporters have come to rally around me.”
A wide range of people — including local community activists, student groups, and Yale faculty — have voiced support in the form of impassioned demonstrations, fundraising drives, and petitions calling for his reinstatement.
In an email to the Calhoun community, Head of College Julia Adams said Wednesday that she has sent a letter to Menafee conveying the thoughts and concerns of many students who have personally reached out to her.
“Quite a few of you have emailed me about your reactions and, overridingly, your personal concern for Corey,” Adams wrote in the email. “I am sure that the tenor of your words and thoughts will mean a lot to him.”
She added that she met with members of Calhoun’s dining hall and custodial staff who are currently on campus to offer her support.
Wouldn't a better solution be to talk with managers of the dining hall and/or his union representatives before destroying private property(no matter how offensive) and, now we learn, expose unknown passersby to harm? The union would have had a much stronger argument to resolve this in advance.
Taking matters into your own hands at work has consequences, and I am sure all Yale employees understand this, as many have lost jobs there before this incident. Just ask the union.
In Mr. Menefee's case, hindsight may be 20/20, but Yale, as an employer, has a responsibility to students, the public, and itself.