Lingering questions over racist messages costs SLU Law its trial team program

In April, at the close of the academic year, a series of baldly racist and sexist social media messages surfaced at Saint Louis University School of Law, allegedly written by a current student during his undergraduate days. 

The posts triggered a slow-boiling crisis that, six months later, has brought the law school’s trial team program to an end.

In an Oct. 12 statement, the seven attorneys who led the program said the school failed to take appropriate action against the student, who had been slated to be a member of the trial team.

“As a result of The University’s failure to act, we chose to cancel the trial team program for the school year, resign our positions as adjunct faculty members, and end our affiliation with the School of Law,” instructors Patrick Mickey, Kayla Williams, Chelsea Draper, George Lankford, Jaclyn Kinkade, Anne-Marie Brockland and Rachel Milazzo said in the statement. “This was not a decision made lightly.”

In an interview, Brockland, a trial attorney who has taught with the program for two years, said the team met repeatedly with university officials before ultimately informing the school on Sept. 8 that the tight-knit group of just 10 students couldn’t operate with such unresolved accusations hanging over one of its members.

“We have a solemn obligation to our students to make sure they aren’t subjected to a hostile learning environment, and if we’re left in the dark about that, we just can’t go forward,” Brockland said.

It’s not clear when or if the trial team program will return to SLU. Brockland, speaking only for herself, said she didn’t intend to return. Mickey, who was the team’s head coach, didn’t return a call seeking comment on its future.

The former adjuncts’ statement came a week after a group of law students anonymously posted a petition on Change.org criticizing Dean William P. Johnson’s handling of the situation. It has drawn more than 500 signatures. 

The petition calls on Johnson to recuse himself from further involvement in the issue. It also calls for the law school to “release a firm timeline of the proposed policy change so that racist actions such as those involved here will no longer go unpunished at SLU,” as well as for an independent investigation “into the underlying incident as well as the law school’s handling of it.”

Jessica L. Ciccone, the law school’s director of communications, said in an emailed statement on behalf of the law school administration that the cancelation of the trial team was “disappointing,” adding that the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act bars the school from discussing any student-related issue. 

“FERPA restrictions limit the information we can provide and prevent us from filling gaps or correcting errors, and that can be frustrating for everyone,” the statement said. “While we cannot those fill gaps, we can and must examine our policies and processes to find ways to do better and be better.”

In an Oct. 10 email sent to students, Johnson apologized for not making a public statement about the posts earlier. 

“I thought it would somehow go without saying that I believe the content in the posts to be utterly repugnant. That was a mistake,” he wrote. “As a white dean of a historically white law school, I should have known that it needed to be said explicitly and loudly. I failed to recognize how widespread the harm would become, and I am deeply sorry about that failure. I apologize for not recognizing that sooner and for not addressing this with the entire community sooner. It is especially important to me that Black members of this community hear directly from me that I stand against racism.”

Johnson’s email did not comment directly on the demands made in the online petition but did vow to pursue policy changes.

“When racist conduct is brought to our attention, we take it very seriously and immediately pursue University processes intended to address the conduct,” Johnson wrote. “It is clear to me that the underlying policies need to be changed to better protect Black members of the University community and other members of underrepresented and marginalized groups from this type of harm.”

Screenshots of the messages in question are attached to the students’ online petition, though identifying information in the screenshots is blurred out. The screenshots depict a direct-message conversation between two people who are commenting about a Black female student. The “N-word” is used four times, including in a comment in which the woman is said to “loves her some white chocolate” because she is posing with a cardboard cutout of then-Royals star Eric Hosmer.

“Fresh off the boat,” one of them writes. 

“Been rotting in the sun with no water and one stale roll a day,” the other responds. “Bound by rusty chains.”

In an email, the woman who was the subject of the posts said the screenshots were posted to Instagram on April 29. They depicted an earlier exchange between two male students with whom the woman had attended the University of Missouri. 

The woman, who does not attend SLU and asked not to be named, said she was not friends with either of the two men, other than that the student who is now at SLU Law dated an acquaintance of hers. “There’s zero bad blood, so I am very unsure as to why I was the topic of their DMs,” she said. She also said she never received an apology.

According to the woman, someone at SLU contacted her about the posts but said the student couldn’t be punished because the comments were made while he was at MU. The former adjuncts gave a similar account, saying they were told SLU “had no grounds under existing policies to take punitive action against the student nor would it support any action that we might take independently, including removing the student from the trial team.”

The instructors’ statement followed a Sept. 30 town-hall style meeting between the dean and the students. The petition alleges Johnson told students that the trial team season was canceled due to “scheduling conflicts” and that the adjunct instructors “couldn’t organize themselves.” 

Johnson’s office didn’t address the accuracy of the petition’s account. Brockland, who didn’t attend the town-hall meeting, denied those allegations and said the Oct. 12 statement was intended to set the record straight. 

While recognizing the difficult position SLU is in, Brockland said the school couldn’t just hang its hat on lack of policy. She has been told that the postings may have been the result of a hack — but she doesn’t know if that is true, or the extent to which the school has tried to verify that claim.

“I do think that if he indeed wrote these messages that are horrific, he should be expelled,” she said. “Someone who has those thoughts and feelings should not be a lawyer.” 

The student alleged to have authored the messages didn’t respond to a request for comment sent to him via social media.