Former graduate student files lawsuit against USU

Greg Noel, a Black Haitian American and former graduate student at Utah State University, filed a lawsuit in March against USU for alleged racial discrimination. 

According to a lawsuit filed on March 20, the Marriage and Family Therapy, or MFT, program director at USU allegedly drew a “coon” caricature of Noel in class in January 2020.

A student took a picture of the drawing and shared it by text message with the other students in the class, according to the lawsuit. 

The drawing, as shown in the lawsuit, depicted an individual with dark skin, a hairstyle similar to Noel’s, and exaggerated features.

According to an article published by The Salt Lake Tribune on March 20, “The professor didn’t appear to realize others could see the image, as he played a prerecorded training on a screen at the front of the room. But the drawing reflected from his computer onto the screen, where it was visible to the class.”

A student took a picture of it and shared it by text message with the other students in the class, according to the lawsuit. 

However, this was not the first incident Noel says he experienced with the program director. 

According to the lawsuit, in October 2018, Noel was working on a school assignment in a private study room when the computer he was working on lost four pages of his assignment. 

The lawsuit says Noel used profane words and pushed a rolling chair aside, but no one else was in the room with Noel and the chair didn’t hit anything.

According to the lawsuit, days later, the director of the MFT program invited Noel to a meeting with the professor and himself to discuss the incident. 

The lawsuit says they met a week after the incident in a private meeting where the director and professor expressed concern that Noel would be “violent towards others” and “violent towards his wife.” 

In the meeting, the lawsuit says the director asked Noel if that incident was him “going full Haitian” and then told him if he wanted to stay in the MFT program, he needed to meet with multiple therapists to get his anger “under control.”

According to the Tribune article, Noel’s attorney’s said schools cannot require students to receive counseling, but Noel signed up for counseling offered at USU to remain in the program. 

After that incident, Noel said he felt offended but tried to brush it off and move forward because he knew that all students had to take several classes from the professor. He did not report that incident at the time according to the Tribune article.

The article reported, Noel said in March 2020, he filed a written report against the director to the Office of Equity because he felt that he was close enough to graduation that he could bring up his concerns, even though he still had two classes with the professor. 

According to the lawsuit, the Office of Equity and Noel entered a formal investigation agreement in which it was stated that Noel could present evidence and witnesses. 

The lawsuit said the investigator for the Office of Equity only interviewed people identified by the director of the MFT program. 

In August 2020, the Office of Equity issued its Final Report of Investigation and Findings. 

The Office of Equity found that, “There is a preponderance of the evidence that the offensive caricature Respondent drew was intended to depict Complainant and the exaggerated features were included based on Complainant’s race and/or color.” 

The lawsuit said the Office of Equity determined, “There was not a preponderance of evidence to support a finding of adverse action discrimination based on race and/or color.”

The director received a written reprimand for his actions in January 2022. Noel graduated in 2020. 

Noel appealed the decision made in the report, but according to the lawsuit, after several requests for updates from the hearing panel, Noel went a year without hearing from USU or the Office of Equity. 

The lawsuit says in May 2022, Noel received an email from USU stating that the then-Provost, Francis. D. Galey, withdrew the written reprimand from the director’s personnel file and that the case would be closed. 

According to the lawsuit, that same day, Galey wrote a memorandum to the director of the MFT program telling him the Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee concluded that the written reprimand was “unjust and must be removed from your personnel file.”

In the lawsuit, the memorandum said while Galey disagreed with the panel’s decision, he would respect their decision and withdraw the written reprimand.

When asked for comment, The Office of Equity referred the Statesman to a USU spokesperson who referred to the public statement that USU released addressing the lawsuit. 

The statement said because Noel’s attorney’s reached out to the media before the university received notice of the lawsuit, the public should know that they are getting one set of facts from one perspective. 

“In this case, as in all cases, the university followed its non-discrimination policy, procedures, and process to their conclusions and dedicated significant resources to the matter,” the statement said. 

According to the statement, the university released a roadmap to “inclusive excellence” and created a division of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

“Utah State is committed to creating a working and learning environment free from discrimination and creating a culture of belonging,” the statement said. 

However, for Luis Rodriguez, who was the multicultural program coordinator at the inclusion center at USU from August 2018 to February 2023, the lawsuit raises the question — is a change in policy needed?

“The response that the university posted on social media about following policies and all these things, that response in itself tells you that the policies haven’t been updated,” Rodriguez said. “If they’re following policies and they found no wrongdoing, then the policy itself needs to change so that the students that experience these types of discrimination are actually supported and feel heard.”

Rodriguez said in his experiences overseeing the multicultural student services,  students got the sense that if they brought up an issue, it would largely be dismissed.

“It’s unfortunate that even in this lawsuit, with the way that the university is handling the publicity, there is nothing about it that creates a sense of security for students,” Rodriguez said. 

Rodriguez said while he does believe some faculty members and professors do their best to create inclusive environments for their students, they can only create a sense of security for their immediate students at the time. He said individual professors can’t change the landscape of institutional policy. 

“I think the administration, whether that’s at the university level, president, or even Board of Trustees, I think they need to denounce white supremacy on campus, because at the end of the day, predominantly white institutions are a safe haven for white supremacists,” Rodriguez said. “What I mean by that is that they protect values of white supremacy, which is to allow for other communities to not have a sense of belonging and to not have a sense of security on campus.” 

Rodriguez said the policies themselves are protective of discriminatory practices that are happening on campus because there is no repercussion to the faculty or students when they are behaving in a way that makes campus unsafe for marginalized or historically marginalized communities. 

“At the end of the day, the institution is going to protect the institution, and it’s not going to protect the experiences of BIPOC students or LGBTQ students on campus,” Rodriguez said.

-Savannah.Burnard@usu.edu

Statesman file photo