Grad student settles lawsuit over alleged racist caricature: report

17 July 2023

Utah State University grad student Greg Noel this weekend settled his federal lawsuit against the school for $45,000 over a racist caricature that was allegedly drawn on a class board, Tulsa's News Channel 8 reported on Sunday.

"Noel alleged that his professor, the director of the Marriage and Family Therapy Program, drew a racist caricature of him and, accused the school of conducting an unjust investigation that cleared the director of any wrongdoing," News Channel 8 explained.

"According to the lawsuit," the Oklahoma outlet continued, "the incident occurred when Noel was two months away from graduating from the program. After experiencing technical issues with a lab computer, he had an outburst, and the program director gave him an ultimatum to seek therapy for his anger issues or risk not completing the program."

Noel's "allegations included the program director making comments about Noel's Haitian background and suggesting he could become violent in a therapy session," the filing states. "Later, during a class watching a pre-recorded training, the director allegedly drew a racist caricature of Noel, which was inadvertently projected onto the class board from the director's laptop."

News Channel 8 noted that although the instructor was investigated and reprimanded, the disciplinary action was "later withdrawn from the director's personnel file after a review by the Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee."

News Channel 8's story is available here.

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