Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

CCSN hit with complaints

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The woman who was hired as an advocate for diversity at the Community College of Southern Nevada and the Nevada System of Higher Education has filed legal complaints alleging top college officials kept her from doing her job.

In Nevada Equal Opportunity Commission, Federal Equal Opportunity Commission and state whistle-blower complaints, Debra K. Lopez alleges that CCSN President Richard Carpenter fired her Sept. 1 for uncovering and bringing civil rights violations to his attention.

Officials informed Lopez this week that she was fired for not doing her job.

As part of her job promoting diversity among students, staff and faculty, Lopez said she forwarded complaints of discrimination or disparate treatment to the administration, including accounts of racial discrimination, hostile work environments, sexual harassment and failure to follow the requirements of the Americans With Disabilities Act.

She contends that Carpenter, along with Vice Presidents Rand Key and Jeffery Foshee, ignored the complaints she brought to them and stymied her efforts to make changes at the college that would ensure equal treatment. She also alleges, as a black woman, she was harassed and discriminated against by Carpenter, Key and Foshee.

Among the complaints she said she took to her bosses:

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Lopez said she was a lightning rod for campus complaints about on-the-job discrimination and harassment, and said she took surveys that indicated the problems seemed institutionalized.

Lonnie Wright, a tenured professor at the college, said he agreed with Lopez that racism is common at CCSN and getting worse, and that his own complaints to higher-ups have been ignored.

Lopez said she documented some employee complaints, and the Sun was able to corroborate others through interviews with the employees, who spoke only on condition of anonymity.

Last April, after she says her supervisors and university system Chancellor Jim Rogers ignored the complaints she brought to their attention, she reported the alleged violations and other allegations of corruption to the Nevada attorney general's office and the FBI. She filed the equal opportunity and whistle-blower complaints after she was fired Sept. 1.

Carpenter called Lopez's accusations "slanderous and libelous," and said the college's record on diversity stood for itself. Key and Foshee denied the allegations. All three said they could not comment further because of the pending litigation.

The equal opportunity complaint also alleges that outgoing Regent Linda Howard, a fellow black woman, treated her disparagingly compared to other diversity directors in the state. Lopez says college officials set her up to take heat from Howard on diversity issues so they could escape Howard's wrath - and even assigned her to a part-time job in the chancellor's office that Howard sought, just so the regent wouldn't get the job.

Howard denied harassing Lopez but declined to comment further because it was a personnel matter under litigation.

Most of the incidents where Howard allegedly harassed Lopez were either witnessed by the Sun or corroborated by other witnesses.

Rogers said he did not recall Lopez ever complaining to him about Carpenter or other system officials.

"I have never found that he had a touch of bigotry in him," Rogers said of Carpenter.

Lopez said in an interview with the Sun that she believes she was hired by Carpenter in June 2005 as a token black woman to build goodwill with minorities.

Federal and state law prohibits public colleges from discriminating based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin. College officials must file affirmative action reports every year, describing their efforts to promote an equitable and inclusive community and to recruit and retain a student, staff and faculty population that reflects the surrounding community.

How they do this is not mandated, but because diverse viewpoints - whether based on socioeconomics, ethnicity or politics - are believed to strengthen the educational experience, many colleges hire diversity officers to promote those efforts.

Lopez's job description included working with the human resources department to promote equitable treatment of employees, be they minorities, veterans, people with disabilities or other members of underrepresented groups. She was also supposed to offer diversity advice and training for administrators, faculty and staff, promote multicultural events at the college, and work with community leaders and the administration to better recruit and retain students and employees from diverse backgrounds.

"I was hired as window-dressing," Lopez said. "They repeatedly put me in a sandbox and created detours when I tried to do something substantial."

Six college and system officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told the Sun that Lopez presented several good ideas on how to promote diversity at the college and the system level, but her only accomplishments in 15 months on the job had been social get-togethers with minority leaders. Because she worked split jobs - at CCSN and at the chancellor's office - it was difficult to hold her accountable for following through on her plans, they said.

Externally, Lopez says, Carpenter gave diversity - particularly the recruitment and retention of minority students - priority. Yet, she said, she was given no staff, no budget and her suggestions were repeatedly dismissed.

For instance, Lopez said her proposal to assess what issues were affecting the recruitment and retention of minority faculty, staff and students through a collegewide survey was rejected.

Lopez's proposal to give diversity training to regents was publicly rejected by Howard at a regents' meeting, when Howard said she didn't want a college employee telling elected officials what to do.

Diversity directors often run into trouble if they do not see eye to eye with their supervisors on what diversity means, or if the administration does not give them the authority they need to bring about change in the culture of a college, said Roosevelt Thomas, founder of the American Institute for Managing Diversity and a national consultant on diversity issues. He said he was speaking generically and not about Lopez's complaint.

Lopez believes Carpenter never had any intention of letting her do her job.

Lopez's temporary replacement, 100 Black Men of Las Vegas founder Larry Mosley, said he has received administrators' full support for his efforts to promote diversity, and had received no complaints from employees in his three months on the job.

More than half of all of the minority students enrolled in the Nevada System of Higher Education attend CCSN, representing nearly 44 percent of the student body.

About 30 percent of the faculty and staff are from minority groups, according to the college's 2006 affirmative action report, and 38 percent of all new hires since Carpenter became president in 2004 have been minorities.

College-aged, nonwhite minorities make up about 48 percent of Clark County's population.

Of all the colleges in the state, the ethnic makeup of CCSN's faculty is the most reflective of its community, failing mainly in its representation of Hispanic faculty, staff and students compared to the community at large.

Carpenter has made student retention - particularly of black and Hispanic students at the Cheyenne campus - his priority as president, and has overhauled student services to support that effort, Mosley said. Carpenter told him that he wanted problems brought to light and solved.

Lopez's allegations are under investigation, both by the state Equal Opportunity Commission and the attorney general's office. She went public with her allegations last week after she says her initial hearing on her complaint convinced her the college was not taking her seriously.

Lopez is asking for an undisclosed sum of money, which includes back pay for being required to work for both CCSN and the chancellor's office without additional compensation.

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