Feds want to know: Did NC college discriminate against a student because she's white?

Federal civil rights officials will investigate whether an N.C. college discriminated against a student because she is white.

The probe at Lees-McRae College by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights will examine how the Banner Elk school handled the 2017 sexual harassment complaint filed by a white female student against three of her peers. The accused students were either African-American or Latino and included a member of a prominent varsity sports team.

A campus hearing committee ruled last year that the male students did not violate the school's sexual harassment policies. An attorney for the female student — the Observer does not identify women who say they have been sexually harassed or assaulted — says the ruling drove her client off campus and led to a suicide attempt.

In a lawsuit filed last year, the former student claims the college's decision in her case was based on "an improper fear" that her allegations would spur a racial controversy across the 1,000-student campus, which is 120 miles northwest of Charlotte.

In November, the former student and her attorney, Kerry Sutton of Durham, also filed a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights, alleging that Lees-McRae discriminated against the student based on race, sex and disability. Her lawsuit says the former student suffers from social anxiety and other psychological problems.

In a letter last month to the former student, Letisha Morgan of the Office of Civil Rights said the agency will investigate whether the college "discriminated against you on the basis of your race (White)" and sex. Morgan said her office has dismissed the former student's disability-based allegation.

While a Department of Education spokesman said the agency does not track the personal characteristics of those who file complaints, an investigation into race-discrimination claims by a white student appears to be rare.

Sutton, who has handled several dozen campus assault and harassment cases around the state, says this is the first time in her career that a racial-discrimination allegation on behalf of a white student has risen to the level of a formal complaint to the Office of Civil Rights.

"I don't think it would be appropriate for a claim of racial discrimination to be rejected or not investigated based on the color of either party," she told the Observer.

"My client has a legitimate complaint about the (sexual harassment) process at Lees-McRae. The issues she raises need to be fixed for every student that goes through the process."

Raleigh attorney Katie Hartzog, who represents Lees-McRae, said she could not comment on the matter. "However, Lees-McRae does not discriminate in any manner regarding the handling of disputes between students, and all students are afforded the opportunity to be heard," she said.

Official word of the federal investigation at the N.C. campus runs counter to a stated goal of the Department of Education under Secretary Betsy DeVos, the controversial appointee of President Donald Trump. Her department announced last year that it would scale back on investigations of alleged civil rights violations on campus colleges to reduce a backlog of cases left by the Obama administration.

Civil rights groups objected when DeVos picked Candace Jackson to run the Office of Civil Rights. Jackson has been a longtime critic of affirmative action. Jackson also has claimed that as an undergrad in the mid 1990s, she was discriminated against by Stanford University because she was white. Her staff will oversee the investigation at Lees-McRae.

When asked by email whether the Lees-McRae probe indicated that the department was giving more consideration to complaints of white discrimination, the Department of Education spokesman did not respond.

In an earlier response to Observer questions, the spokesman said the Office of Civil Rights "is committed to ensuring equal access to education and promoting excellence through the vigorous enforcement of civil rights to protect all students."

Last fall, a national poll conducted for National Public Radio and Harvard University's school of public health found that 55 percent of white Americans believe discrimination against white people exists. That same poll found that a similar percentage of Republicans who voted for Trump believed that preferences for blacks and Latinos where hurting whites.

With DeVos at the helm, the Department of Education has rolled back Obama administration guidelines that required colleges to more aggressively confront allegations of sexual harassment and assault. Education officials say they made the change because the former rules lacked "basic elements of fairness" for all students involved.

Critics say the changes, including one which requires a higher standard of proof, will keep more victims from stepping forward. Supporters of the change say that the old rules were unfair to the accused, most of them men.

According to its website, the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights has more than 1,750 pending investigations of racial discrimination at K-12 schools and colleges. Those include six at Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools; three at the Union County schools; and two each at Central Piedmont Community College and Queens University of Charlotte.

At Lees-McRae, the former student's discrimination complaint focuses on an October misconduct hearing the college held for the three students accused of harassing her. Because of their concern for "racial repercussions," the committee members violated their own rules by allowing the varsity athlete's mother to "loudly and aggressively" confront the accuser and her mother, the accuser's lawsuit says.

The committee also allowed a large crowd to gather in the hallway outside the hearing room that "loudly cheered" for the accused students during breaks in the proceedings, the lawsuit says.

After the female student appealed, the committee's ruling was overturned and a new hearing ordered. It has not been rescheduled.

Meanwhile, allegations of sexual harassment and assault continue to roil across college campuses, including in the Carolinas.

In a case that drew national headlines last year, Sutton defended UNC Chapel Hill football player Allen Artis against allegations by a white female student that he raped her. School authorities found that Artis had not violated campus sexual assault policies, and prosecutors later dropped the criminal charges sworn out against Artis by his accuser.

At Lees-McRae, Sutton says, there are bigger issues besides her client's race: College procedures to adjudicate sexual assault and harassment cases "don't work," she says.

"Students at every aspect are suffering," Sutton says. "Nobody walks away from one of these cases and says, 'Oh, that was a good outcome.'"

This story was originally published April 18, 2018 at 12:18 PM with the headline "Feds want to know: Did NC college discriminate against a student because she's white?."