Squint your eyes. The resistance of blue light deflate your pupils and its intentions remain unknown. Tipping your head forward to mask the rays makes you look down, the surface of your hands are blue, frozen in time. More blue lights appear in the horizon and surely more will await around the corner. You move through them, carrying the light on your skin. What purpose do they serve? Who put them up? Will they work for you or against you if something happens?

The blue lights are security measures and are scattered throughout the domains which the Ivy-league universities occupy. This publication explores the “Blue Phones” in New Haven and the public discourse and history of campus police and security. In 1894 Yale University established the first private campus police force which today are part of New Haven’s ‘triple occupation’ of Hampden and New Haven PD. Yale PD officers operate as fully authorized police, but as a private institution, YPD are not obliged to the same public disclosure, responsibilities or transparency.

Through investigative research this publication unravels the history of YPD through the university police archives from first handwritten notes to modern email warning systems and scrutinizes security vs. safety and property vs people.

Archive press photos by Mike Marsland, Yale type face by Matthew Carter, thanks to AR-models, documents and diaries in courtesy of Yale Sterling Memorial Library.