Kulturkampf

[Eric Cartman]

In late October, a watchdog group released a scathing report refuting an Oregon State University professor's claims of Native American ancestry, prompting a graduate student to start an online petition calling for their removal in November.

But her issue wasn't just with the professor's ancestral claims.

The Ph.D. student who created the petition alleged OSU professor Qwo-Li Driskill had committed a series of abuses against students at OSU's College of Liberal Arts. Those grievances ranged from heavy workloads to alleged discrimination against students with disabilities and retaliation in the form of negative grades.

According to multiple graduate students, Driskill's behavior was the subject of concern long before a nonprofit raised serious questions about their Indigenous identity. Those collective concerns sparked letters to school leadership and most recently to OSU's president, demanding action.

Driskill, who is transgender, nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, has fired back with complaints against those same students and the university, alleging discrimination.

...

In addition to workload, there were complaints from students with disabilities and those with an illness or injury, saying they weren't afforded accommodations in class, like being able to attend via Zoom — an option Driskill afforded themselves on at least one occasion, Khan said.

Khan said students initially thought these issues could be resolved by talking to Driskill, but the associate professor was dismissive of feedback.

"It really started to feel like we were just not getting through to them with our grievances as students and graduate student employees," she said.

...

Khan said she's not heard back from the office about Driskill's allegations. However, she said she heard rumors from within the department about Driskill accusing some students of transmisogyny and discrimination, which she noted in the graduate student group's letter.

Khan believes those accusations have been used to discredit the cohort of students who've voiced complaints, which she said includes transgender students.

"It's not impossible for us to be bigoted against a trans person, I will admit that," Khan said. "But it seems like a stretch to say all of these trans students are exhibiting transmisogyny in our grievances."

However, Driskill has since filed a larger complaint against OSU, this time with the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries.

Driskill's Oct. 5 complaint alleges a broader culture of "backchannelling and triangulation that created a hostile work environment, particularly toward trans persons," an issue Driskill said they first raised with Bernardin last year.

In the complaint, Driskill alleged instances of school leadership denigrating a department event, and a faculty member making disparaging remarks against a graduate student related to their gender and their history as a victim of sexual violence.

Driskill also said they submitted multiple bias incident reports throughout the spring, including one for a school email they alleged outed transgender and nonbinary students.

Driskill alleged they've been "targeted for retaliatory actions and subjected to multiple and persistent microaggressions as well as macroaggressions," and excluded from work-related positions and department communications because of their disability, gender and racial identity.

Khan and other students, however, said Driskill retaliated against them and first-year graduate students during the current fall term in the form of stricter attendance polices and harsher grading.

...

The watchdog report included letters from various tribal enrollment offices denying Driskill's membership with the Cherokee, Osage and Lenape tribes — tribes to which Driskill claims ties.

The group's news release noted Driskill has acknowledged they are not citizens of any federally recognized tribe but maintains their ancestral claims.

On top of the enrollment office letters, however, the report also included genealogical histories of both sides of Driskill's family.

Following the release of the report, Driskill stopped coming to class, according to Yola Gomez, a first-year Ph.D. student who was taking two courses this term with the associate professor — which Gomez later dropped. Gomez said Driskill sent an email to students announcing they were taking medical leave.

The release of the watchdog report capped off a heartbreaking disillusionment for Gomez.

Gomez, who identifies as trans, multiracial and multiethnic, decided to further their education at OSU specifically to work with Driskill on indigenous and Two-Spirit studies.

Two-Spirit is an umbrella term used by and for Indigenous people who are part of the LGBTQI+ community — serving as a placeholder for other terms being recovered due to Indigenous language loss — and can refer to an Indigenous person's gender and sexuality.

That's according to OSU associate professor Luhui Whitebear, who took over Driskill's Indigenous Two-Spirit and queer studies course this term.

Whitebear declined to comment on the controversy surrounding Driskill.

According to multiple students, Driskill played a pivotal role in shaping this particular field of study. Fraud allegations not only inflict emotional damage, but academic and professional hurt for students who based their work on Driskill's, Gomez said.

"Their scholarship, if you've written a paper, or any kind of concept, or anything that they have encountered or engaged with that was Dr. Driskill's, it's now meaningless," Gomez said.

So when they're talking about OSU, they're not talking about the freeware Oendan / Elite Beat Agents clone, right?