Yolanda Wang, Contributing Photographer

In University President Peter Salovey’s Monday afternoon email about pro-divestment protesters arrested for trespassing on Beinecke Plaza, he wrote that there were a total of 60 people arrested, including 47 students. The News has confirmed from three sources that 48 people were arrested. 

Before and after Salovey’s email, Yale Police Chief Anthony Campbell ’95 DIV ’09, along with encampment organizers, told the News on Monday that either 47 or 48 people were arrested. On Tuesday, New Haven Police Department Public Information Officer Christian Bruckhart and a University spokesperson confirmed to the News that 48 people had been arrested.

Minali Aggarwal, a third-year graduate student and member of the jail support team for the encampment organizers, also told the News on Tuesday that 48 protesters had been arrested.

Various reporting outlets used Salovey’s inaccurate count in their initial reporting, including the New York Times, New Haven Register and Fox News. As of 3 a.m. on April 24, there is at least one New York Times article, “Universities Struggle as Pro-Palestinian Demonstrations Grow,” that contains the incorrect count, though the Times has corrected another story on the arrests. 

The online text of Salovey’s Monday email posted on the Office of the President page of the Yale website still says that “Yale Police arrested sixty people” as of 3 a.m. on Wednesday.

A University spokesperson told the News on Tuesday that Salovey’s Monday count of 60 arrested people came from the YPD. 

“Information available at the time of the Monday afternoon message differed from the figures shared by Yale Police Department late Monday night after final processing and after the message had gone out,” the spokesperson wrote in an email to the News, relaying this information on behalf of the University and Salovey.

However, YPD Chief Campbell told the News at 8:18 a.m. on Monday that somewhere between 40 and 45  protestors had been arrested, a figure much closer to the final number than what Salovey wrote in his email. Later that day, at 9:40 a.m., a University spokesperson told the News on behalf of Campbell that YPD had arrested 47 students, and did not mention any other arrests. At 8:16 a.m. on Monday, a protest organizer announced to the crowd at the intersection of College and Grove Streets that 48 people had been arrested.

It is unclear why the YPD would have allegedly told Salovey a higher number of arrests around midday Monday than what Campbell told the News twice in the morning and what YPD told the University on Monday night.

There are also discrepancies between the counts the University and organizers provided on the breakdown in Yale affiliation of the people arrested. 

On Tuesday morning, the News asked a University spokesperson to provide the number of arrestees who are current Yale students, Yale-affiliated individuals or non-Yale affiliated individuals. The University spokesperson wrote that 44 were Yale students and four were “non-students.” 

While the total number of arrests was corroborated by Aggarwal, she told the News that only three of the 48 people arrested were not Yale students. Aggarwal told the News she confirmed this number by communicating with other jail support team members and protesters and by searching on Google and the campus directory.

The reason for the different counts of Yale students arrested remains unclear.

“President Salovey’s public fabrication of 10 non-Yale affiliated arrests demonstrates gross incompetence at best, and bad-faith scare tactics at worst,” Sadie Lee ’26 wrote on behalf of organizers. “Yale arrested 48 people, 45 of whom were Yale affiliates, and it hasn’t even bothered to get the numbers right in the days since.”

Campbell did not respond to multiple requests for comment on Tuesday.

The Yale Police Department is located at 101 Ashmun St.