New allegations surface in UNCC sex scandal involving faculty member, overseas trips
A teacher-student sex scandal continues to deepen at UNC Charlotte, where the list of potential victims has grown and some faculty members have criticized school leaders for their handling of the controversy.
Robert McEachnie, a lecturer in the Department of History, sexually assaulted or harassed at least four female students on school-sponsored overseas trips to the Holy Land from 2017 to 2019, according to an amended lawsuit filed by one of his alleged victims.
McEachnie was eventually disciplined by the school in 2019, more than two years after another student first filed a formal sexual-harassment complaint against him with the university.
Yet the amended lawsuit claims that one or more of McEachnie’s superiors were aware in 2017 of his possible sexual misbehavior with multiple students on the trip that summer to the Mount Zion archaeological site in Jerusalem but did not act.
That failure, according to the complaint, allowed McEachnie to keep leading the Holy Land trips — putting future students in jeopardy.
University leaders said in a statement that they are limited by law on what they can discuss about the lawsuit and its related issues. But they added that they fully investigated the 2019 allegations against McEachnie, which are the basis of the student’s lawsuit. They also said they protect student privacy as part of a safe and supportive campus atmosphere for all students, including victims of sexual misconduct.
As first reported by The Charlotte Observer in March, a female student from the 2017 trip sued McEachnie and the school in federal court, claiming that her former teacher initiated an overseas sexual relationship with her — after she went off medication to control significant psychological problems.
While the student’s name is listed on her lawsuit, the Observer generally does not identify alleged victims of sexual misconduct and is using her initials, L.S.
McEachnie also propositioned and inappropriately touched a second student on the same trip, the lawsuit claims, then threatened to block her admission into graduate school if she reported him.
The second student — identified in the lawsuit by the initials A.W. — also suffered from “serious medical conditions” at the time of McEachnie’s misconduct, according to the document. She filed a formal complaint against McEachnie upon her return to campus in July 2017.
The allegations have since widened.
More sexual misconduct alleged
The amended lawsuit, which surfaced in federal court a month after the original complaint, now claims McEachnie sexually harassed or inappropriately touched female students on the 2018 and 2019 trips as well.
The most recent filing by Charlotte attorney Julie Fosbinder argues that those students and potentially others were put in harm’s way because the chairman of UNCC’s History Department, identified in faculty records as Jurgen Buchenau, failed to adequately investigate or report A.W.’s 2017 allegations, as required by school policies.
McEachnie, who has worked at the school for about a decade, was demoted from senior lecturer to lecturer and banned from taking students on university-sponsored overseas travel, among other punishments, after L.S. filed a formal campus complaint against him in 2019, two years after her trip.
McEachnie did not respond to an Observer email Thursday seeking comment. Neither did his attorney, Marc Gustafson of Charlotte.
In response to an Observer email Thursday, Buchenau wrote, “On the advice of the university, I cannot comment on these allegations.”
Meanwhile, new information included in the amended lawsuit alleges that the faculty leader of the 2017 trip also was aware of McEachnie’s sexual behavior with at least two students but failed to intercede or report him.
While the lawsuit does not identify him by name, UNCC religion scholar James Tabor acknowledged to the Observer that the complaint appears to be referring to him. Tabor, one of the school’s most prominent faculty members, has been a part of the Mount Zion summer excursions since they began in 2007.
The lawsuit describes a sometimes-charged atmosphere in Jerusalem in which teachers, staff and students on the 2017 trip worked shoulder-to-shoulder at the Mount Zion dig during the day, then drank and socialized together at night.
In a series of emails to the Observer on Friday, Tabor said he had no knowledge of “any ‘faculty leader’ of our Mount Zion archaeology program knowing about or ignoring the kinds of things reported by these students, whom I honor and respect,” he said. “Had I known I would have absolutely intervened and reported such, and tried to do anything to protect (them).”
UNCC faculty members criticize school, policy
Other members of the school’s faculty have begun speaking out.
In a public statement last month, the UNCC chapter of the American Association of University Professors accused the school administration of “echoing an archaic culture of silence around campus sexual assault.”
That silence, the statement said, “sends a message that those experiencing unwanted sexual attention will not be taken seriously or supported.”
The statement, addressed to UNCC Chancellor Sharon Gaber and Nancy Gutierrez, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, calls on school leaders to settle the lawsuit instead of fighting it in court while publicly addressing the underlying issues.
The group, which has about 130 faculty and staff as members, also called on the school to revise its policy on personal relationships between faculty and students, which the statement describes as “among the very weakest in the entire UNC system.”
The school’s policy is similar to the UNC System’s in many respects. However, UNCC Policy 101.3 says relationships between teachers and students they supervise are “improper” and “may result in disciplinary procedures.” The systemwide policy bans such relationships outright.
According to the statement from the faculty group, UNCC’s policy “creates space for these relationships and their harmful consequences to develop. Beyond being inappropriate, unethical and exploitative, these relationships endanger the academic freedom of our students.”
Nicole Peterson, president of the UNCC faculty group, declined comment Thursday, adding: “We’re still working with the administration on our requests.”
In a statement posted on the office of legal affairs’ website, the university said the pending lawsuit “involves allegations that were exhaustively investigated and addressed by the University.” In an earlier court filing, the university asked for the complaint to be dismissed.
UNCC said that while it is limited by privacy laws on what it can say about the matter, “We don’t want to dissuade survivors of sexual harassment or other sexual or interpersonal misconduct from coming forward with their stories because of privacy concerns.”
“We are similarly committed to providing a safe, inclusive, and respectful environment for all university community members and guests.”
Along with its student-teacher relationship guidelines, UNCC has a second policy that bans sexual harassment and interpersonal violence. Violations can trigger investigations under Title IX, which bans sexual discrimination in educational programs that receive federal money.
Under UNCC’s Title IX policy, “It is expected that every University employee will report (potential violations)“ to the Title IX office.
‘Drama’ at Mount Zion
On its Mount Zion webpage, UNCC promotes summer trips to the archaeological dig in Jerusalem as one of the most distinctive educational programs on campus.
“Our discoveries, our research, and the educational opportunities the Mount Zion excavation offers are unparalleled,” according to a posted statement from Tabor and the program’s co-director, Shimon Gibson.
For the summer 2017 program, 18 students signed up. The majority of them were women. The lawsuit said there were two faculty members leading the group. One of McEachnie’s roles was grading the students, the lawsuit says.
“They were such a great group,” Tabor said in one of his emails Friday. “It was by all accounts an amazing summer, so far as I knew.”
According to the lawsuit, however, the UNCC trip simmered with “drama.”
Some of the female students, in a reference to McEachnie, began referring to themselves as “Robert’s hoes,” and there was widespread speculation over whether he and L.S., then 21, were having an affair.
The conjecture was substantiated when some of the students found text messages between L.S. and McEachnie, according to the lawsuit.
In the months before the trip, McEachnie had groomed L.S. for the sexual relationship, the student’s lawsuit says. He was also aware of her history of psychological problems for which she was still being treated.
In Israel, McEachnie was “able to observe the serious side effects” when the student abruptly stopped taking her medication — a decision that impaired her judgment and made her incapable “of fully consenting to the relationship with Mr. McEachnie,” the lawsuit says.
Unknown to L.S., according to her complaint, McEachnie propositioned and groped A.W. during the same trip. Despite the teacher’s threat of retaliation, the suit says, the student reported McEachnie’s behavior to Buchenau upon her return to campus.
Her allegations appear to have been largely buried until they were rediscovered two years later when L.S. filed her own complaint against McEachnie.
Buchenau initially said he failed to act on A.W.’s allegation because “he had misunderstood his obligations” under university policies, which required him to report the complaint to the school’s Title IX office.
However, the amended lawsuit says multiple emails obtained by L.S. and her attorneys show that Buchenau promised A.W. an investigation, promised to talk with her and any student witnesses she could provide, and also “asked for the identify of the student who was having the relationship with McEachnie.”
A.W., according to the lawsuit, never heard back.
Instead of a full investigation, Buchenau asked McEachnie if he was having a sexual relationship with a student, according to the lawsuit. The teacher said he was not.
In 2018 and 2019, when UNCC students left to spend the summer at Mount Zion, McEachnie went with them.
This story was originally published May 2, 2021 at 6:30 AM.
