HOUSTON
Three former Texas Southern University students credited with helping expose a spending scandal that led to indictments of top administrators won a retaliation lawsuit against school officials.
A federal jury decided Friday that William Hudson, Justin Jordan and Oliver Brown were kicked out of the university and arrested as payback for criticizing Priscilla Slade, university president at the time, and other school leaders.
Known as the TSU-3, they are credited with exposing corruption that tarnished TSU and led to charges against Slade. In a plea bargain, Slade agreed to repay nearly $130,000 of the half-million she misspent in school funds on clothes, home furnishings and landscaping.
Jurors awarded actual damages totaling nearly $200,000 to all three students, and the jury is set to return next week to decide punitive damages.
“At least someone stood up for us, and the jury stood up for us,” Brown said in Saturday’s editions of the Houston Chronicle.
Peter Plotts, a lawyer with the Texas attorney general’s office who represented TSU, declined to comment.
