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A Yale Dean Lost Her Job After Calling People ‘White Trash’ in Yelp Reviews

An image of Dean June Chu from a YouTube video. Dr. Chu left that position after it was discovered that she made disparaging remarks in Yelp reviews.Credit...Washington Post, via YouTube

A dean at Yale who was placed on leave after she left online reviews recommending a restaurant for “white trash” customers and describing movie theater workers as “barely educated morons” has left her position permanently, a college official said.

June Y. Chu, who was appointed in May 2016 as the dean of Pierson College, one of Yale’s residential colleges, posted a series of reviews on Yelp that were published by The Yale Daily News last month with screenshots of 10 of them dating back to 2015. The newspaper said that the reviews had caught the attention of Pierson students and had circulated among them.

“If you are white trash, this is the perfect night out for you!” she wrote in one review, published under the name June C., about a local Japanese restaurant.

Another review, for a cinema, said of its concession workers: “So what they have is barely educated morons trying to manage snack orders for the obese and also try to add $7 plus $7.”

Dr. Chu later deleted her Yelp account and sent an email to the residential college community apologizing, the News said.

“I have learned a lot this semester about the power of words and about the accountability that we owe one another,” Dr. Chu wrote, according to the newspaper. “My remarks were wrong. There are no two ways about it. Not only were they insensitive in matters related to class and race; they demean the values to which I hold myself and which I offer as a member of this community,” it said.

Dr. Chu was placed on leave last month.

On Tuesday, the head of Pierson College’s administrative office, Stephen Davis, said in an email to students that Dr. Chu was no longer its dean. “I write to let you know Dean Chu has left her position at Pierson College and wishes the best to the students,” Dr. Davis said, according to a copy of the message obtained on Wednesday. “As a result, I am initiating the process of the search for a new dean, who will be in place before the start of the fall term.”

He also said that he would be reaching out to students to see who would be interested in being involved in the search.

In a message to students in May, Dr. Davis said that Dr. Chu had assured him and others “that she had posted only two troubling reviews on social media.” He said he later found out she was “in fact responsible for multiple reprehensible posts, enough to represent a more widespread pattern. The additional posts that surfaced compounded the harm of the initial two, and they also further damaged my trust and confidence in Dean Chu’s accountability to me and ability to lead the students of Pierson College.”

Dr. Chu did not reply to an email sent to her Yale account on Wednesday, which delivered an automatic reply referring queries to Mark Schenker, a senior associate dean at Yale. Mr. Schenker did not reply to calls and emails on Wednesday.

Calls to personal telephone numbers associated with Dr. Chu were not returned.

Dr. Chu was scheduled to teach a sophomore seminar in September 2017 called “Perspectives in Asian American Psychology,” which was meant to explore Asian-American identity issues and influences, according to the online syllabus. The status of the course was not immediately known.

According to the announcement last year of her appointment, Dr. Chu earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from Bryn Mawr College and graduate degrees from Harvard University and the University of California, Davis. She had taught at the U. C. Davis and the University of Pennsylvania, where she was director of the Pan Asian American Community House, according to the statement by Jonathan Holloway, the dean of Yale College.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 25 of the New York edition with the headline: Yelp Reviews Cost a Yale Dean Her Position. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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