Members of the Yale University community are planning a protest in New Haven, Conn. to turn attention on police in the death of professor Samuel See.
See was found dead in a New Haven jail cell on the morning of Nov. 24, after being arrested during a domestic dispute with his husband the previous day.
Colleagues, friends and members of the Yale community plan to march Tuesday through campus and the town to the New Haven Police Department demanding answers in See's case.
The cause of See's death remains unknown, and may take months to determine, according to U.S. News & World Report. So far, all that's been determined is it wasn't a suicide and trauma did not play a role.
Nathan Brown, a University of California, Davis professor involved in campus activism, wrote an email that was circulated around the Yale community over the weekend calling for participants in the march.
"A death in jail is a political death," Brown said in the email, according to the New Haven Register. "This is especially the case when it is the death of a gay man, given the structural and historical homophobia of policing, incarceration and the legal system in the United States. It is also especially the case when we know that Sam was dealing with mental health issues bearing upon the volatility of his relationship and the emotional instability he reportedly exhibited at the time of his arrest."
See earned his Ph.D at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Police say they routinely checked on See, who was alone in a cell, throughout the night he was in jail. State marshals "reported speaking with Mr. See and making eye contact with him during these routine checks, " New Haven police said in a statement last week. An internal investigation by the NHPD is underway.
The department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Huffington Post Monday morning.
The NHPD has already apologized for waiting until Nov. 27 to release any information announcing they found See deceased under their supervision on Nov. 24.
"We need to demand answers," Christopher Miller, a Yale professor of French and African-American studies, told the Yale Daily News. "And the silence of Yale University in this is deafening."