[ad_1]
In the video, Mr. Key said that, starting in his first year as a student, Mr. Crews made sexual comments to him, hugged him, pinched his cheek and tried to “force me to come out about my sexuality.”
“It got to the point where I went into a really bad depression,” he said.
He said he reported the behavior to the college, but Morehouse did not take action.
Morehouse is consistently ranked near the top of the list of more than 100 schools designated by the Department of Education as historically black colleges and universities, or H.B.C.U.s.
“This story has pierced the hearts of graduates of H.B.C.U.s,” his lawyer, Tiffany Simmons, said in a statement Friday. “It is a disgrace that a black institution of higher learning would allow this to happen and it be swept under a rug.”
A few hours after Mr. Key’s video was posted on Tuesday, a second student retweeted it with a video of his own. That student, who identified himself by name and as a first-year student at Morehouse, also accused Mr. Crews of inappropriate behavior. He alleged that Mr. Crews falsely told another student that he had come out to him as gay.
The second student did not respond to messages seeking an interview on Friday.
The videos prompted a broader conversation online about the environment for those who experience or report sexual misconduct at Morehouse, a small community of about 2,200 students. The conversation follows a reckoning at other college campuses across the country, where issues surrounding Title IX, the federal law that protects against sex discrimination, have become central.
Morehouse has said it has zero tolerance for campus sexual harassment and assault.
In 2018, the college’s president, David A. Thomas, said Morehouse had made progress on the issue in recent years, including hiring a Title IX coordinator.
[ad_2]
Source link
