A federal judge in New York City has cleared Dominican College in a Title VI suit by an African American former student who was dropped from its occupational therapy program for low grades in a required course.
Sharon Mathis failed to produce evidence that the college, in Orangeburg, discriminated on the basis of race when it dismissed her from a Weekend College B.S. /M.S. program in 2013. She had enrolled in 2010.
According to the decision, she received a C+ in a course called Advanced Practice in summer 2012 and a C when she retook it in spring 2013 with the same instructors. Dominican dismissed her after she twice failed to earn a satisfactory grade in the course.
The program required a minimum GPA of B- and limited students to only one retake of a three-credit class and one retake of a six-credit class.
She sued after her three-level internal appeal and complaints to an occupational therapy accreditation organization and to a professional association proved unsuccessful. The suit accused an instructor of exhibiting “a racial animus” and subjecting her to disparate treatment based on race.
Rejecting the suit, U.S. District Judge Lorna Schofield said Mathis “never explicitly mentioned race discrimination as a basis for her [internal] appeal” or in her complaints to the external organizations.
“The undisputed evidence shows that before Mathis commenced this lawsuit, Dominican lacked actual knowledge of the alleged race discrimination,” Schofield wrote in her opinion. Nor was there any evidence that college administrators knew about the purported discrimination and failed to take action.
