A Slow Reconciliation: Yale’s Expansion and its Impact on Town-Gown Relations

In the early morning hours of February 17, 1991, a gunshot disturbed the New Haven chill. In the turbulent, drug-riddled years of the 1980s and early 1990s, that was a tragically common occurrence for the city. This particular gunshot, however, attracted the attention of the city and, indeed, the country, because it resulted in the murder of Christian Prince, a nineteen-year-old Yale sophomore. Testimony by his would-be accomplice—although still contested—named James Duncan Fleming, a local youth, as the murderer. Reportedly, Fleming had demanded only money from the Yale student, but still decided to murder him after Prince relinquished his wallet willingly. Fleming, who is black, is said to have mused “I should shoot this cracker” before directing his gun at the white, and privileged, Prince. Christian Prince’s murder served as not only a tragic shock to the entire Yale community, but also a spark to set off unprecedented dialogue about race relations and town-gown relations in New Haven. For nearly a century preceding 1991, Yale’s growth and expansion had been unchecked physically and mentally; rather than the symbiotic relationship which the university and the city had once pursued, Yale became one of the world’s foremost universities and left New Haven abandoned in its dust. The opulent gates of the ivory tower remained permanently closed to most members of the New Haven community, and the distinction between the privileged “haves” of Yale and the destitute “have-nots” of the struggling, post-industrial city had never been clearer. Christian Prince’s death cannot be viewed as anything other than a tragedy, but it does seem to have compelled Yale to work to revitalize this decaying relationship. Nearly twenty years later, town-gown relations have recovered a bit from their low point in the early 1990s. The major reason for this improvement seems to be Yale’s less self-centered attitude towards expansion. While Yale had pursued its earlier expansion at the detriment of the city, the two now work in conjunction to allocate land, resources, and tax money. Although the complexity race and town relations cannot be fully explained by any singular factor, the correlation between those relationships and Yale’s attitude towards expansion are striking, and can teach a tremendous amount about the connection between physical and psychological development.




Sarah Landers