Montana State University is the subject of another federal civil rights investigation — the second opened this academic year — for its handling of complaints of discrimination against students.
On Dec. 5, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights notified MSU that it had opened an investigation into a complaint that the university failed to respond to incidents of harassment against students with Jewish ancestry and female students. The Daily Montanan first reported the additional investigation on Dec. 18.
The letter requests data and information from MSU, including copies of discrimination complaints specifically involving antisemitism but does not detail the allegations that prompted the investigation.
The investigation comes as allegations of antisemitism in college campuses have garnered national attention, prompting debates about free speech and backlash from politicians following Hamas’ attack on Israel in October and Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
In an email to the Chronicle, MSU Vice President Tracy Ellig said the university is cooperating with the OCR process and that it provided all the information requested in response to the first investigation and plans to do so for the second as well.
Ellig noted that “at this time the OCR’s work is based on allegations, not confirmed facts. OCR has not issued any findings indicating MSU’s response was lacking.”
If the Office of Civil Rights does make recommendations to improve, MSU “will welcome those for the benefit of our students,” Ellig said.
In October, the Office for Civil Rights began a separate investigation into MSU’s handling of death threats and hate speech against LGBTQ+ students.
In February, the Queer Straight Alliance, a student group at MSU, promoted an off-campus drag event. Soon after, the group received an anonymous email threatening to send everyone at the event — which they referred to as a “grooming party” — to an “early death in hell.”
A week after the first threat, the club received a second email telling members to “repent” from their “satanic ways,” and that “true Montanans will not stop until we expel all the groomers and colored people from our campus and great state.”
The threats were deemed not credible by MSU officials, and the university did not publicly acknowledge them for over four weeks, according to student complaints.
The Office of Civil Rights’ investigation was prompted by more than 20 complaints about MSU’s handling of the threats against QSA members, as well as harassment against former student Alexandra Lin.
Lin, who is part Taiwanese, and queer, reported harassment from a fellow sorority member, including anti-Asian slurs, a noose placed in her room and messages telling her to kill herself. The harassment took place over a two-year period.
MSU placed a mutual no-contact order between Lin and the other student in 2021, but removed it in March, citing a lack of violations.
In October, Lin told the Chronicle she began receiving threatening, anonymous messages in the weeks after the order was dissolved. The messages included more slurs, explicit pornography and Nazi imagery.
Fearing for her life, Lin said she left Montana for over week in March because of the threats.
Some students — even those who did not experience discrimination — said there was an organized effort to send as many complaints as possible to the federal office to make sure something was done about these incidents.
Lin has confirmed “the Office for Civil Rights informed her she also could file a formal complaint against MSU given the information she already provided to the agency about her ongoing harassment there,” according to the Daily Montanan.
Editor’s note:This story was update at 3:45 p.m. on Dec. 19, 2023 with comments from Montana State University representatives.
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