Sarah Braasch, 43, received backlash after calling police on a fellow student who fell asleep in the common room of their dormitory.
Sarah Braasch, the 43-year-old Yale University graduate student who called the cops on a sleeping Black classmate, has crawled back into hiding after receiving little to no sympathy from the public.
Braasch became public enemy no. 1 earlier this year when the target of her cop call, fellow graduate student Lolade Siyonbola, posted a video of their tense confrontation to social media. The self-described women’s activist-turned-lawyer called campus police when she stumbled upon a sleeping Siyonbola in the common room of their dormitory late one night, marking the second time she’d dialed police to report a Black student in the building.
“I have every right to call the police,” she tells Siyonbola in video of the incident.
“I deserve to be here. I pay tuition like everyone else,” Siyonbola is heard telling responding officers. “I’m not going to justify my existence here. That’s not even a conversation.”
Video of the confrontation went viral, thrusting both women into the national spotlight. Braasch has laid low in the months since — until Wednesday when she addressed the situation and sought public sympathy. She didn’t find any, however.
“You can’t imagine the #pain of having everything you’ve worked for your entire life ripped from you in a matter of moments when you’ve done absolutely nothing wrong …,” Braasch wrote from her now-private Twitter account @sarahbraasch1. ” All I ever wanted to do with my life is help people and make the world a better place. My life is over.”
In a second tweet, the human rights lawyer lamented having to flee Yale’s campus amid outrage over the incident and linked it to an NPR article discussing social media-inspired mob violence in India, City Pages reported.
“I literally had to flee #Yale’s campus and go into hiding for my safety,” she wrote. “I’m a lifelong and proud #humanrights #activist who has devoted her life to #socialjustice … I wouldn’t wish what has been done to me on my worst enemy.
Brassch’s tweets painting herself as a victim did not go over well with critics, who wasted no time shaming her for her antics. Meanwhile, others took pleasure in laughing at her pain.
“Done nothing wrong,” pal you called the police on a black woman taking a nap while saying “I have every right to call the police” when you could’ve expended LESS effort by minding your business and walking past,” writer Zoe Samudzi tweeted.
“… Sarah Braasch is leaning hard into her white womanhood: first acting as the aggressor, and then retreating into some imagined martyrdom when she discovers racist actions have consequences,” she continued in a follow up tweet. “Calling the police is self-deputizing to teach someone a lesson. There is only ever degrees of malicious intent. You’ll have to spare me if it backfired you didn’t ruin a black woman’s life *as planned*.
Others also chimed in.
“Isn’t “having everything you’ve worked for your entire life ripped from you in a matter of moments when you’ve done nothing wrong” EXACTLY what you were trying to inflict on Lolade Siyonbola? You’ve earned every moment of your pariah status, #SarahBraasch.”
Braasch has since shuttered her Twitter account.
