timesunion.com
December 2, 2009
SUNY Cobleskill officials call ex-dean's claims about budget "baseless"
By SCOTT WALDMAN, Staff writer
First published in print: Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Editor's Note: To see a PDF of the lawsuit, click here. To comment on this story, visit the Schools blog.
A former dean of the State University of New York at Cobleskill has filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the school, saying it discriminated against black students by keeping them in school for their tuition dollars when administrators knew they had no chance of earning a degree.
Thomas Hickey, who was stripped of his position as dean of liberal arts and sciences in July, filed the federal lawsuit on Nov. 23. In it, he claims the school has been admitting students it knows have no likelihood of graduating "for the express and admitted purpose of making budget," according to court records.
Hickey, who is a tenured professor, said the school targeted black students from the New York City region who did not meet the admissions standards of the college. Hickey said Anne Myers, the school's provost and vice president for academic affairs, developed the discriminatory policy, knew it was harmful to students and resisted the development of remedial programs that could have given the African-American students in question a chance to succeed.
In the suit, Hickey claims Myers expressed to the faculty that such students were "not cognitively and genetically prepared" to function in the college. Myers told him, "I do not care about these people," court records show.Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=872380&TextPage=1#ixzz0YjyLxBD8
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