Dr.

Melvin Hale and his wife, Angelica Hale, File Two Federal Discrimination
Cases Against Emporia State University and Its Leaders in Kansas

December 12, 2016 Former library school professor Dr. Melvin Hale and his wife, Angelica
Hale, a former Deans assistant at the same library school, have filed two separate federal
discrimination lawsuits against Emporia State University and its top administrators in Topeka,
Kansas on Thursday, December 8, 2016. Both are claiming Title VII and Section 1983 First
Amendment Retaliation for speaking out against racism on campus and reporting a racial
incident which occurred where they worked at the School of Library and Information
Management (SLIM) on April 8, 2015. Title VII allows employees to sue employers for
discrimination, and Section 1983 is the federal statute that enables an individual to file a civil
action against government officials for deprivation of constitutional and federal statutory rights
by persons acting under color of law. Dr. Hale is asking for $10 million and Angelica Hales
claim is for $3 million in damages.
There are currently three federal lawsuits against the university claiming a history of racial
discrimination or incidents occurring at the School of Library and Information Management. In
addition to the Hales lawsuits, Dr. Rajesh Singh, who was a professor at SLIM from 2009 to
2014 and was passed over for tenure, filed a racial discrimination lawsuit in 2015 which is
currently in the discovery phase and expected to go to trial in early 2017. Dr. Singhs claims are
against the university, former president Michael Shonrock, Provost David Cordle, former SLIM
Dean Gwen Alexander, and SLIM Associate Dean Andrew Smith.
Dr. Hales original lawsuit was filed in October 2015, but was voluntarily dismissed in
September 2016 without prejudice meaning that Dr. Hale had the option to re-file the case upon
the condition that all pleadings, discovery, testimony, orders or rulings, or any other substantive
matters from this [original] case, will be binding in any later filed action of the same claims so as
not to prejudice either party to this action, with costs to be borne by the party incurring it. In
addition to suing the university, the seven administrators in Dr. Hales lawsuit are: Interim
President Jackie Vietti, Provost David Cordle, Associate Provost Gary Wyatt, General Counsel
and Director of the Koch Center for Leadership and Ethics Kevin Johnson, Director of Human
Resources Judy nderson, Associate Director of Human Resources Ray Lauber, and Professor
and Interim Dean of SLIM Mirah Dow.
Dr. Hale states that the administrators at Emporia State University took what should have been
a routine police investigation into a hate crime incident and turned it into a public spectacle by
claiming the incident never occurred as we reported, when in fact, they were abject liars trying to
cover-up the fact that a longtime Emporia State employee was the prime suspect in the writing of
the racial slur in the students notebook. In 2016, Dr. Hale wrote a memoir regarding his
experiences at Emporia State University entitled Django Unchained and the March on Emporia
State, Institutional Racism as Practiced on an Academic Plantation in Kansas.
Angelica Hale claims that she was denied a permanent position and resigned after she and her
husband reported the bias incident to SLIM Dean Gwen Alexander. The incident involved
vandalism and hate speech in the office of her graduate assistant where the word NIGGAZ was
found scrawled in the students notebook. The couple claims that the dean never took action so
they then took their concerns to senior administrators and the university police. The results of an
internal investigation in September 2015 denied that the incident occurred as the Hales had
reported, and instead the university portrayed the Hales as the perpetrators of a hate hoax in a
press conference on September 9, 2015. In addition to the university, the defendants named in
ngelica Hales case are Interim President Jackie Vietti, Provost David Cordle, and former
SLIM Dean Gwen Alexander.
An increase in racial turmoil has beset the university in the last few years. Just last Friday,
(December 9, 2016) current ESU president Allison Garrett shared the news that a racial incident
occurred in the campus dorms. The university received a Jefferson Muzzle Award for infringing
on free speech in 2015-2016 relating to the Hale racial incident. According to the organization,
the Jefferson Muzzle Award is a national award given by the Thomas Jefferson Center to those
individuals and institutions responsible for the more egregious or ridiculous affronts to free
speech during the preceding year. http://jeffersonmuzzles.org/complete-list/
The ESU library school is headquartered in Emporia Kansas and it has a national reach with
satellite teaching locations in Portland, OR; Denver, CO; Salt Lake City UT and Kansas City, KS
(Overland Park).
The federal judge in both of the Hale cases is Daniel D. Crabtree.

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