Yelp reviews, the last refuge of a dissatisfied customer, have caused a stir inside the ivy-strewn walls of Yale University this week. According to Eater, Pierson College dean June Chu has been using her downtime to post jeers on the review site, which would just be a matter of course if they weren’t full of elitist sentiment. In addition to other businesses, Chu’s vitriol was aimed at a mochi place, which she dismissed as ”fine” for “a white person who has no clue what mochi is,” as well as a Japanese restaurant that she felt offered “the perfect night out” if you are “white trash.” She also slammed a movie theater’s concession stand, describing employees there as “barely educated morons trying to manage snack orders for the obese and also try to add $7 plus $7.”
Lots of Yelp reviewers get carried away by virtue of having a place to go off, but Chu does have a higher profile than most, and she is, after all, in a position of higher education: As dean of Pierson College, she advises about 500 Yale students. So she’s been held to account for the classist crap she posted on the Yelp pages of restaurants, concession stands, and dessert shops—by her students, no less. The Yalies collected Chu’s reviews, which are available in this Yale Daily News PDF, so you can read all about how she went off on gym employees and a lawn care service. Chu was a bit more careful in her words when referring to a burrito place, clarifying that when she expressed concern over having someone spit in her food, it was because of something she’d heard from her brother.
According to The Washington Post, Chu hasn’t been asked to resign, but she has apologized to the student body: “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.” The dean hasn’t, as of this writing, actually extended an apology to the people and places she disparaged via her Yelp account, which she’s since deleted. If there is anything funny about this whole mess, it’s that students became aware of Chu’s demeaning posts because she sent out an email bragging about her Elite Yelp status.