Ellie Park, Senior Photographer

Yale Public Safety has released a new charter for a civilian advisory board that will include students, roughly a year after a previous board effectively vanished.

The new charter, sent to the News on Thursday and available on the department’s website, signals that the renamed Yale Public Safety Advisory Board may soon be assembled. But the charter does not explicitly empower the board to review civilian complaints, unlike a 2022 charter for the previous version of the civilian body, the Yale Police Advisory Board.

Instead, the new Public Safety Advisory Board may now “offer input on community public safety strategies” and “review and recommend university public safety policies,” according to the charter.

At an August City Hall meeting with the chiefs of the Yale Police Department and the New Haven Police Department, members of New Haven’s Civilian Review Board called for greater accountability from Yale Public Safety. Yale Police Chief Anthony Campbell ’95 DIV ’09 committed to revamping the department’s civilian advisory board after it was discontinued last year.

The Yale College Council in January passed a resolution calling for a Yale police oversight committee. The proposal cited students’ concerns about surveillance of pro-Palestinian protesters in the spring of 2024.

“Nominees for appointment to the PSAB as detailed in the Charter are currently in process,” Head of Yale Public Safety Duane Lovello wrote in a statement to the News this week, referring to the Public Safety Advisory Board. He added that once those appointments are finalized, they will be made public and a meeting schedule will be announced.

The 2022 charter for the Yale Police Advisory Board gave it the power to advise and issue reports to a public safety administrator regarding the investigation of civilian complaints. There are no such provisions regarding civilian complaints in the new charter.

The new charter’s mission statement “is to help assure that security and policing policies and practices acknowledge the interconnectivity of our host city of New Haven and align with the values, safety, and well-being of the university community while fostering trust and equitable treatment.”

It also has specific requirements for membership that the 2022 charter did not. Under the 2022 charter, the board had to have seven members including representatives from the Yale faculty, student body, staff and the New Haven community.

Under the new charter, the board is set to have ten members: two faculty representatives nominated by the provost; two staff representatives nominated by the secretary and vice president for university life; the vice president of technology and campus services; the head of public safety; a resident of New Haven; and three Yale students. The students will include one nominated member from each of three bodies — the Yale College Council, the Graduate Student Association and the Graduate and Professional Student Senate.

Mike Hall, president of the Yale Police Benevolent Association, said he had not been informed of the new charter, but he was not surprised by its publication.

“My assumption was that they would be appointing new positions as the school year starts,” Hall said.

Saman Haddad LAW ’26, the president of the Graduate and Professional Student Senate, said Yale administrators had informed the Senate of the new charter and asked it to submit nominations for the advisory board seats.

“In at least the past two years, GPSS has not had formal representation on a public safety committee of this type,” Haddad said. “We are encouraged to see graduate and professional student voices formally included through this new structure.”

As of Tuesday afternoon, Yale College Council had not yet been informed of the charter, according to President Andrew Boanoh ’27, Vice President Jalen Bradley ’27, and Senate Speaker Alex Chen ’28.

In a Tuesday interview, Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis said he had spoken with Public Safety leadership when the board was being formed in the spring, but had not read the charter yet.

“It’s important to have student input into security policy,” Lewis said.

The News’ records confirm the existence of a Yale civilian complaint review committee as early as 1971.

Olivia Woo and Asher Boiskin contributed reporting.