Yale Reverses Stand, Permits Student Apartheid Foes to Rebuild Shantytown

Yale University reversed its stand on symbolic shanties built on campus to protest Yale investments in South Africa, and on Saturday granted students permission to rebuild them.

University officials last week ordered the shantytown torn down, a decision that led to 164 arrests--mainly of student demonstrators and supporters--and drew criticism from faculty members and state lawmakers.

A. Bartlett Giamatti, Yale’s president, on Friday asked university deans to appoint an ad hoc committee to study the issue and find a way to “heal the deep divisions” in the campus community.

The committee met Saturday with four representatives of the Yale Divestment Campaign and, after discussion, granted the group permission to rebuild the shanties, “to continue to educate the Yale community.”

The students began rebuilding their “Winnie Mandela Village” Saturday on the site of the original shantytown.

“It’s a small step in the right direction,” said Kim Phillips, a Yale graduate student who met with the ad hoc committee and who was among those arrested last week.

“It’s interesting that they are trying to make it look as if they are giving us permission,” Phillips said.

The official action was taken out of “deep desire to heal what has occurred here in the past two weeks,” Giamatti said.