Safety as Proxy: the Yale Bubble

By Laura Zeng

March 25th, 2024

Yale University exists within the town of New Haven, but many have criticized the ways in which the university has subsumed the city, economically and culturally. While the “town-gown divide” is not unique to Yale, tensions have— historically and presently— been particularly exacerbated here. As historian David McCullough put it, the expansion of Yale’s campus over the past two centuries "forever improved Yale culture and enhanced its international reputation, [but also] further grounded a grand university in a struggling city that, for the most part, resented its presence.”

So what is the “Yale Bubble”?

It's not exactly a positive term.

The “Yale Bubble” connotes the ways in which the university and its students have isolated themselves from the city. Upon asking a friend in casual conversation what he considered the boundaries of the Bubble to be, his immediate response was “are you trying to cancel me?”

Criticism of the Bubble’s existence is more than fair. But it's also important to tease out where people actually believe the Bubble is first before declaring it problematic. To that end, I use safety as a proxy in this experiment, asking 34 students where they feel safe walking alone at night. Of course, this is a flawed premise: I do not mean to imply that Yale is safe while New Haven is not, or otherwise assume people are making that distinction. Rather, my aim is to bypass a possible filter of political correctness, to get people to reveal something about the ways in which they move across campus and city, and to source data on what one version of the “Yale Bubble” might be.

the Yale Bubble as defined by
34 students

Given a screenshot of New Haven, I asked students to answer the question, “where do you feel safe walking alone at night?” by drawing an approximate region on a map. The results are overlain as shown, with Yale-owned properties delineated in white. Many students accompanied their map drawing with a description noting specific locations (Walgreens, Elm City Market) or streets (Dwight, Edgewood) to be included or excluded.

smallest vs. biggest Bubble

Evidently, answers ranged— which led me to wonder how identity played a role in affecting answers.

the Bubble as defined by
17 men

a (very scientific) approximation of the average answer...

In an effort to make comparisons, I simplified the aggregate 17 drawings to a single shape.

the Bubble as defined by
17 women

the Bubble as defined by
men vs. women

Surprisingly, gender affected size less than I thought: the areas women felt safe largely overlapped with the areas men felt safe walking alone at night. However, women were more careful to specify routes: they drew more precise shapes with irregular tendrils, while the men had more broadly circled regions.

For example: both men and women had restaurants like September in Bangkok or grocery stores like Stop and Shop included in their Bubbles, but women seem to venture out to these destinations more intentionally. State Street and Whitney Avenue are also two streets women seem to feel safe walking along, in comparison to the men, who made less of a distinction.

the Bubble as defined by
22 BIPOC students

the Bubble as defined by
12 non-BIPOC students

the Bubble as defined by
BIPOC vs. non-BIPOC students

Race affected outcomes more than I predicted, or perhaps in the way I thought gender would have: BIPOC students had a much smaller average range than non-BIPOC students. As can be seen, one eastern bound for BIPOC students is Orange St, while non-BIPOC students have everything up to Highway 91 included as areas in which they felt safe walking alone at night.

the Bubble as defined by
23 domestic students

the Bubble as defined by
11 international students

the Bubble as defined by
domestic vs. international students

Upon reflection, 9/11 of the international students I interviewed were from East Asian countries, skewing the data, as not all international students are obviously from East Asia. However, I did then find that the most popular East Asian restaurants— Taste of China, Noa, a slew of ramen places— are concentrated in the “International” Bubble. The “East Asian International” Bubble thus seems to have a different center of gravity, skewing towards these institutions and shaped by them as relevant landmarks. I might just be conflating factors that have nothing to do with each other— but it’s an interesting correlation, nonetheless.

“I feel safe walking everywhere at night.”

1 Yale student.

“I don’t feel safe walking anywhere at night.”

3 Yale students.

Three students did not feel comfortable walking anywhere at night, demonstrating the problem, once again, of using safety as a proxy in this project. One student noted being uncomfortable with the question being asked in the first place, because as a BIPOC woman she did not feel like the question was fair: the issue of safety to her is place-agnostic, and has nothing to do with implications of Yale vs. New Haven. Though I didn’t specify I was going to use safety as a proxy, she seemed to have intuited the intent, and was against the simplification.

where 34 Yale students feel safe walking along at night, or one version of the “Yale Bubble”

My intention with this project was not to stereotype, trivialize, or downplay the complexities inherent to the town-gown divide, concept of the “Yale Bubble,” or issue of safety in urban contexts in general. Crime happens within the supposed confines of the university too, and as the first university campus to have a police force—formed in response to student protests— conflating “where I feel safe walking alone at night” with “Yale University” is a dangerous exercise. Especially given that perception of safety can be as important as the statistics themselves, I reiterate that the premise is a flawed one. And yet, how else can we measure where the “Yale Bubble” truly exists?

Though grounded in the built environment of Yale-owned property and Yalie-frequented spaces, the Bubble is ultimately a socially constructed place. In this project, I therefore use safety as a proxy and identity as a variable to map different versions of the Yale Bubble, acknowledging that what safety means to a person might in fact have nothing to do with the Bubble itself.

*Correction: The anonymously cited friend's comment of "am I going to get cancelled" was in response to the question "where do you feel safe walking alone at night," not "what do you consider the boundaries of the Yale Bubble to be."

Sources

Birmingham, Thomas, et al. “Elicker, Salovey Split over Yale’s Responsibility to Resolve City Budget Crisis.” Yale Daily News, 3 Feb. 2021, https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2021/02/03/elicker-salovey-split-over-yales-responsibility-to-resolve-city-budget-crisis/.

“Borrowing ‘Fear City’ Tactic from 1975, Police Union Tells Yale Students to Avoid New Haven.” AP News, 22 Aug. 2023, https://apnews.com/article/yale-new-haven-police-union-crime-7b8245c222e1e16f2195f3e64fcb531d. Kim, E. Tammy.

“How the Yale Unions Took Over New Haven.” The New Yorker, 23 Oct. 2023. www.newyorker.com, https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/how-the-yale-unions-took-over-new-haven. McCullough III , David.

“Town, Gown, and the Great Depression: Yale and New Haven During the Construction of Yale’s Original Residential Colleges .” Yale Historical Review , vol. VI, no. I, https://historicalreview.yale.edu/sites/default/files/yhr_yaleissue.pdf. Nelson, Libby.

“Why Nearly All Colleges Have an Armed Police Force.” Vox, 29 July 2015, https://www.vox.com/2015/7/29/9069841/university-of-cincinnati-police. What Yale Could Have Paid | The New Journal. 1 May 2019, https://thenewjournalatyale.com/2019/05/what-yale-could-have-paid/. Yale Alumni Magazine: Highs & Lows of Town & Gown (March 2001). http://archives.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/01_03/town_gown.html. Accessed 23 Mar. 2024. “Yale Announces

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