San Jose State University is being sued for $5 million in damages by an African-American teenager who authorities say was the target of racial hazing on a California university campus last fall, according to Reuters.
Officials with San Jose State University failed to protect the teen from racist pranks and remarks by white students with whom he shared a dormitory suite, according to the claim filed internally through the university system by attorney Carl E. Douglas, Reuters reported.
"When there can be this level of bullying at San Jose State University, a bastion of progressive thought, that should be a bellwether for everyone nationwide," Douglas told Reuters.
"I want there to be a conversation started by the filing of this claim... there are issues of racial intolerance, of bullying and of harassment running rampant in universities and colleges across this nation," Douglas said, according to Reuters.
Authorities said four white roommates taunted and harassed the student, who was 17 at the time, by displaying Nazi imagery and a Confederate flag in their dormitory and attempting to hang a U-shape bicycle lock around his neck, Reuters reported.
The roommates, also students, referred to him as "three-fifths" or "fraction," the claim said, in an apparent slur relating to the fact African American slaves counted as only three fifths of a person under an 18th century agreement between U.S. states to determine state population sizes, according to Reuters.
The harassment lasted from at least September 23 to October 31, 2013, Reuters reported.
At least one school employee, a student housing assistant, appeared to know about the bullying more than a month before the teen's parents complained to campus officials and put an end to it, the claim said, according to Reuters.
By failing to provide the teen with equal housing and investigate the bullying sooner, the university and its employees violated his civil rights and breached multiple contracts he had with the school, the claim said, Reuters reported.
Three of the teen's former roommates, Colin Warren, 18, Joseph Bomgardner, 19, and Logan Beaschler, 18, face misdemeanor hate crime and battery charges in connection with allegations of tormenting the teen, according to Reuters.
They have all pleaded not guilty at Santa Clara County Superior Court and remain suspended from the school, Reuters reported. A fourth defendant is a minor, and details about his case have not been made public.
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