Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh seemed to puff up with pride when talking about his Yale pedigree during last week’s Senate hearing. But a group of alumni who rallied outside the Ivy League university’s club in Manhattan on Tuesday said the judge has disgraced his degree.
“As long as Yale is being used as any reference for this man, I think those of us who care about Yale, and care about the Supreme Court, and care about the country, need to come out and say this is not what the university stands for,” Jeannine Dominy, a 1985 graduate, told The Daily Beast.
Carrying signs reading “No Justice, no seat,” and “Kavanaugh is a liar,” about two dozen protesters gathered on the sidewalk—with two counter-demonstrators gathered a short distance away.
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They represented just a small fraction of the 4,500 graduates who have called on the nominee to withdraw, amid an allegation that he exposed himself to a Yale classmate in 1983. Kavanaugh denies the accusation.
Richard Ulger, who graduated with Kavanaugh in 1987, said he was surprised to see how many men signed a letter calling for the judge to withdraw—including members of his fraternity, Delta Kappa Epsilon, as well “jocks” he used to hang out with in college.
Ulger attended the rally on Tuesday with his father, Harlow, who graduated Yale in 1953. Both said they were concerned by the allegations against Kavanaugh, but more troubled by how the nominee behaved during the Senate hearing.
“His silly statement saying he never drank heavily at Yale? Everyone drank heavily at Yale,” said the elder Ulger. “For him to pretend to have been the Dalai Lama just did not strike me as truthful.”
The Manhattan rally followed a protest last week in which current students dressed all in black filled the hallways of the law school in silent opposition. Other Yale students traveled to Washington to protest in person.
“The amazing thing about a moment like this is that we can create change,” organizer Christina Baker Kline said of Tuesday’s alumni demonstration “… Change [at Yale] has been slow, change is always slow, but we’re making it, and that’s really exciting.”
