Yale students and workers delivered a petition to Yale School of Management (SOM) Dean Edward Snyder Tuesday calling on him to reverse the expulsion of SOM student Grant Mao. The petition was signed by over 1,000 Yale students and employees, including more than 250 Chinese nationals.

Mao came to the United States from Shanghai, China in the fall of 2014 to study at the Yale School of Management. He said that in April 2015 he was told unexpectedly that he was expelled from Yale on academic grounds. He was suffering from depression. Eventually his depression became so severe that he was hospitalized for several days. The grounds for his expulsion were that he fell short of completing his academic requirements for the semester by one half credit. When Mao appealed his expulsion, he was told that his dismissal was effective immediately, his health insurance was no longer valid, and he must leave the country within 15 days. Subsequently, he received an email stating that he was barred from entering the SOM building.

“Yale refuses to deal with people who are depressed,” said Mao, “I shouldn’t have to fight for Yale to respect me. But I will keep fighting until they do.”

In an additional statement of support, graduate employees in the department of East Asian Languages and Literatures reiterated the demand to reinstate Grant Mao and said, “Deep cultural and linguistic barriers concerning mental health make it disproportionately difficult for Asians and Asian Pacific Islanders to understand and seek help for mental illness.”

Mao’s petition was circulated by members of the Graduate Employees and Students Organization (GESO–UNITE HERE), who have been organizing to form a union for graduate teachers and researchers at Yale. Four times in the past 18 months, a majority of graduate employees have called on the Yale administration to agree to a unionization vote without intimidation.

Mao’s petition comes in the context of 15 graduate teachers and researchers filing a class action grievance around inadequacies in Yale’s mental health care, including long wait times and insufficient options for treatment.

“I had to wait six weeks to see a therapist, and then it was a struggle every week to get an appointment because he was so overbooked,” said Tif Shen, a fourth year graduate employee in Mathematics.

"We will not stop fighting for Grant until he is reinstated and treated with dignity," said Local 35 UNITE HERE President Bob Proto.

If Dean Snyder does not agree to reinstate Mao, he will be forced to leave the country at the end of the month.