NEW HAVEN, Conn. _ Yale Law School students held a sit-in Monday morning demanding an investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, including one while he was a Yale student.
Kavanaugh, a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, has been accused by Christine Blasey Ford of sexual assault when he was a teenager. In a new allegation revealed Sunday evening in The New Yorker, Deborah Ramirez said Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at a party when he was a first-year student.
Kavanaugh has denied both allegations, calling Ramirez's accusation "a smear, plan and simple."
At the Yale protest, students dressed in black sat silently in the Sterling Law Building, filling the hallway. Protesters called for their school to do better to uphold its own values.
Students spoke of Anita Hill, a Yale graduate who accused Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual misconduct in 1991. "Anita Hill, as a woman of color, as a black woman was not believed not just because of her gender but because of her race," one student said.
Yale Law School Dean Heather Gerken said the allegations against Kavanaugh are "rightly causing deep concern at Yale Law School and across the country."
"Many of our faculty and students have taken actions to raise these concerns about the confirmation process. Fifty members of our faculty have signed a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, urging the Senate to 'conduct a fair and deliberate confirmation process,' and our students have organized a protest and community action that is taking place at Yale Law School and in Washington, D.C., today," Gerken said.
"Students have worked with the Law School administration and faculty so that the community can come together as a whole to discuss this important moment in our country's history," she said in a statement released by Yale Law School.
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat and Yale Law graduate, said Ramirez and Ford "plainly have survived a sexual assault. It has been a time of terror and anguish for them and the pain and anguish they've chosen to endure speaks to their credibility as does their desire for an FBI investigation."
"They have a right to tell their stories when and how they wish. They should be heard, respectfully and full and there should be an investigation," he said.
