Yale arrests, releases Brazilian reporter for trespassingA persistent reporter from Brazil found herself arrested, handcuffed, and jailed for several hours after she tried to track down her country's top judge at a Yale Law School event last week. Claudia Trevisan, the US correspondent for O Estado de S Paulo, was released from her jail cell that same evening of September 26, and charges of criminal trespassing were dropped, as requested by Law School Dean Robert Post ’77JD—but not before the incident drew international coverage and protests from her newspaper and the Brazilian consulate in Hartford. Yale defends the arrest, handcuffing, and brief imprisonment, saying that Trevisan tried to sneak into what she knew was a private gathering "by misrepresenting herself" to Yale police. Trevisan tells a different story. Last Thursday, she says in a blog post and in an interview with the New Haven Independent, she got word from her editors that Joaquim Barbosa—Brazil's controversial, corruption-fighting chief justice—would be at Yale Law School for a Global Constitutional Seminar that afternoon. She contacted the law school's communications director, who told her that the event was closed to the public and the press. Trevisan replied by e-mail that she would come to New Haven anyhow in hopes that Barbosa would agree to speak with her as he entered or left the seminar. "Believe me, I would rather not stand on the sidewalk of Yale," said her message, as quoted in the Independent. "My newspaper in Brazil really wants me to do this. I would appreciate if the organizers of the event could let [Barbosa] know that I will be there and would like very much to talk with him." When she reached the law school, Trevisan says in her blog post, a security guard told her she could look around for the seminar. Eventually she concluded it was taking place elsewhere and headed for Woolsey Hall, where other Global Constitution Seminar events were scheduled. What she found at Woolsey will sound familiar to those who have passed through the building's rotunda, which connects Beinecke plaza to the busy intersection at College, Grove, and Prospect streets:
"I went the upper floor and saw a policeman," Trevisan continues. "I went straight to him and asked if the seminar was being hel[d] there. My intention was to make sure and wait to the minister outside. I did not attempt to enter the room where the event was happening. The policeman did not answer my question and asked me to follow him, which I did." Back on the ground floor, "he began to interrogate me," Trevisan writes:
In an initial statement defending the arrest, Yale said that Trevisan had been told that the seminar was private "and that she was not permitted on Yale property"—a seemingly strong response on a campus that hosts many public events and has numerous semi-public areas, including the downtown city street that houses the law school. "She came onto Yale property, entered the law school without permission, and proceeded to enter another building where the attendees of the seminar were meeting," that statement said. A later and more detailed statement does not mention the preemptive warning to stay off Yale property. Nor does it repeat the assertion that Trevisan "entered the law school without permission." But it does contend that Trevisan "sought to gain entry to the private gathering" on the second floor of Woolsey Hall "by misrepresenting herself to the Yale Police officer who was providing security at the event, claiming to be 'looking for a friend.'” Trevisan denies entering the law school without permission and denies trying to crash the private meeting, although she acknowledges that she didn't identify herself as a journalist. Yale's second statement also says Trevisan's conduct "should be contrasted to that of another Brazilian journalist who attempted to gain entry to the event. This journalist was informed that the meeting was private, and he agreed respectfully to wait on public property to interview those participants who wished to speak to the press." In an e-mail, university spokesman Tom Conroy adds: "The reporters' requests to interview [Barbosa] were forwarded on behalf of the reporters to the judge and he declined the requests and the reporters were informed of that."
Yale's statements apparently did not satisfy Cezar Amaral, Brazil's Consul General in Hartford. “If this happened with an American correspondent in Brazil, it would be a scandal,” he told the New Haven Independent. “It would be front-page news.” Yale's two statements are reproduced in full below. Initial statement (September 28, 2013):
Statement from Yale University and Yale Law School (September 29, 2013):
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1 comment
Claudia,
Are you unable to return to Brazil?