Yale encourages anonymous reports to enforce COVID-19 restrictions, creates surveillance state

When students began making their way back to campus after the COVID-19 pandemic forced an extended period of remote education, schools across the country faced difficult decisions on how best to limit the spread of the virus on campus. Seemingly determined to continue standing out for the worst possible reasons, Yale made the unfortunate choice to discard due process principles and basic notions of fundamental fairness by adopting a scheme to enforce the Yale Community Compact that relies on anonymous accusations of one s peers. 

Still in place today, Yale s enforcement scheme violates basic due process principles. It deputizes students to serve as anonymous informants to enforce campus COVID-19 restrictions, thereby preventing accused students from knowing the identities of their accusers, and giving accused students just 24 hours to respond, even as they face potential removal from the university without a hearing. This week, FIRE sent a letter to Yale, urging the Ivy League institution to revise the Community Compact and related procedures.

via www.thefire.org