Student files Title VI complaint against NC State citing racism, Islamophobia

A student filed a Title VI complaint against NC State on behalf of the Students for Justice in Palestine organization. It is the second recently reported Title VI complaint leveled against the University, the first of which was settled in July.

Nathaniel Dibble, a third-year studying political science, filed the complaint in April, citing racism and Islamophobic discrimination. Title VI complaints, developed under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, can be filed if an individual believes they have been discriminated against on the basis of race, color or national origin.

NC State Police arrested Dibble at a protest in February while he was handing out pamphlets at the Engineering Career Fair, though the charges have since been dropped. Police also arrested a non-affiliated individual at a pro-Palestinian protest in May. Dibble said these arrests are forms of disproportionate use of police, a reason for the complaint as cited in an Instagram post by the NC State Young Democratic Socialists of America announcing the complaint. 

“Police arrested a student which is a form of excessive force when these are just students accessing parts of the campus that are open to them,” Dibble said. “And again, there was no vandalism. There’s no violence occurring. Excessive force is something that police can legally use and do usually use, just because when you’re at a protest, when you are face-to-face with the cop, there is no judge there. There is no lawyer there telling you what your rights are, and there’s no lawyer or judge there telling the cop what your rights are.”

Mick Kulikowski, a University spokesman, said the University does not comment on legal matters.

NC State Police Chief Daniel House said University police officers must take constitutional law training when going through basic law enforcement training, and the department requires a legal update training each year, which consists of case law, Fourth Amendment and First Amendment training. He said every course has an element of de-escalation education.

While social media posts stated the complaint was on behalf of the Students for Justice in Palestine organization, Dibble said he was the one to file the complaint because unlawfully arresting a student is a concrete act of discrimination.  House said every arrest has been lawful.

“Whether the district attorney decides to dismiss charges or whether student conduct decides not to move forward, which both of those have happened, those would be out of our control,” House said. “What we have to get to is probable cause to believe that someone has committed the crime. So with these, clearly, they did. I agree with every single one of them.”

Students for Justice in Palestine and the Young Democratic Socialists of America are asking for anonymous testimonies of discrimination to be submitted to them as evidence against the University. Dibble said while the complaint is a good place to start from, it’s important to center perspectives of Palestinian and Muslim students. This also provides an opportunity to demonstrate a pattern of discrimination they say is happening on campus.

“That’s what our public statement was about — we’re trying to reach out to students to have more testimonies and more evidence to show that this is not just a one time event where I was arrested and that’s the only example of discrimination,” Dibble said. “This is a systemic issue where every single student has been affected, whether they know it or not and whether it’s in explicit ways or implicit ways. That’s really what we’re trying to show with this.”

While Dibble said the right thing for the federal government to do would be to acknowledge and address the discrimination cited in the complaint, he said the complaint is less about expecting the government to act against NC State and more so to make a public statement.

“We know this is the federal government we’re working with, so we don’t have too much faith in that to be honest,” Dibble said. “So the approach we are taking, and the approach many students across the nation have been taking, is filing these complaints, getting the evidence in order, making it public information and then using that public information to — to be blunt — publicly shame NC State in order to get them to change. Because our experiences on their own aren’t enough to make NC State change, however, publicly calling them out for the way they have treated us is, because public universities rely on a reputation with the public in order to get their money, to get their funding, to get more more students.”

The complaint also cites “discriminative discussions and meetings amongst Student Government leaders,” referring to an undisclosed meeting held by student senators in April regarding a proposed resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and the divestment of University funds from Israel.

Despite past tension between Student Government leaders and the Students for Justice in Palestine and Young Democratic Socialists of America organizations, Dibble said Student Government is still ultimately a pedestal to make student voices heard.

“That is why we so urgently want the support of Student Government, because who else is supposed to represent the students?” Dibble said. “When we go march in the street, we are representing the students, yes, but we are seen as an illegitimate way to do so. So really, the only point of [institutional] legitimacy we have is through Student Government.”

Pro-Palestinian students scrutinized Taquan Dewberry, student senate president pro-tempore, for his role in the undisclosed meeting. Dewberry said a lack of communication led to the “confusion” surrounding the ceasefire resolution.

“A lot of our work in Student Government centers around the ability to talk to each other and then talk to people in the community, and that just wasn’t running as effectively as it could have at the beginning,” Dewberry said. “We were at the start of a new session. We were all scrambling to get acclimated to our new positions, and in doing so, we made some mistakes.”

Student Government has since passed the ceasefire resolution, which the Students for Justice in Palestine publicly commended on social media, in addition to a resolution sponsored by Dewberry calling for institutional support for students affected by global conflicts. Dibble said the goal of the complaint and the student movement as a whole is to get the University to divest from Israel, which the ceasefire resolution calls for.

Although he said he does not speak on behalf of Student Government and only as an individual within the organization, Dewberry sees Student Government’s recent action as a way to move forward.

“I just want to make sure that we’re very clear that we intend for [the ceasefire resolution] and [the institutional support resolution] to be a way for us all to move forward together and hopefully to bridge the divides that have been made apparent on our campus,” Dewberry said. “I’m glad that we have been made aware of them and now that we have the opportunity to help provide a solution to them.”

Dewberry said while he has his own personal views, the resolution is Student Government’s way of supporting pro-Palestinian, Muslim and Arab students’ safety and right to express their voices on campus. As for Dibble’s Title VI complaint, Dewberry said Student Government should be doing whatever it can to support students.

Dibble said the next steps for the complaint include awaiting a response from the US Department of Education.

“The next step would be seeing the results of what the Department of Education finds and then publicizing that, like I said, so we can publicly shame NC State,” Dibble said. “Because we are at a point where we believe that public shaming is the only thing that will really change the chancellor’s mind and the Board of Governors’ minds on this.”

The University cannot take stances on political issues because of institutional neutrality which the Board of Trustees reaffirmed its commitment to in April. Chancellor Randy Woodson told Technician in March that the University’s job is to foster an environment where discourse can thrive.

“Since I’ve been chancellor, I’ve been asked to take all sorts of positions on many different issues affecting the country and the world,” Woodson said. “And you know, at the end of the day, our job is to provide an environment where students can have free and open exchange, faculty can teach and have free and open exchange.”