MARK BRODIE: ASU's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism had expected to welcome Sonya Duhé as its new dean on July 1. But after more than 20 Loyola University New Orleans students alleged a pattern of racist and homophobic remarks, Duhé will not claim the position. Piper Hansen with The State Press reported on her history at Loyola and the backlash that followed. She joins us now. Piper, good morning.
PIPER HANSEN: Hi. Good morning.
BRODIE: So remind us how this all started. What was the first allegation and how, then, did you find other students who had similar stories?
HANSEN: Yeah. So Sonya tweeted on Tuesday, Black Out Tuesday, that she stood with her black students and one of her former students, Whitney Woods, who we spoke with, she sort of did this, she put together a thread of her time at Loyola explaining different situations and encounters that she had with Sonya. And we reached out to her first and then we kind of just found this whole community of students who were really willing to speak with myself and Wyatt, who helps me immensely on this story. And we just basically sat down with all of them from Tuesday until Thursday, listening and making sure that we had every single detail of their story correct.
BRODIE: How did Cronkite students and faculty respond to stories from the New Orleans school?
HANSEN: So there is a lot of social media content that a lot of Cronkite's students were putting out, sort of saying, you know, "hey, look at this thread. Look at, you know, this person who might be interacting with students." And then I think it was Thursday when the Arizona Republic put out a story, some Cronkite students started a group chat in order to put together a statement and put together a petition that has since received over about 4,000 signatures just from, you know, Cronkite students, people in the Arizona community, people who went to ASU. So there is a large group chat with a bunch of students who were sort of saying, you know, we need to listen and we need to do something about this.
BRODIE: Has Duhé said anything or responded to any requests for comment about this?
HANSEN: No. So I left two voicemail, two, like voicemails for her. And then on my third attempt to try and call her, I got a message saying that her inbox was full and I haven't gotten a text back or an email back from her either.
BRODIE: Do we have any sense as to why these allegations didn't come up during the initial hiring and vetting process?
HANSEN: We don't really know that right now. Our sources at Loyola sort of told us that it didn't come up while Duhé was at Loyola because they were afraid that she might punish them for speaking out. So that's definitely how they were feeling.
BRODIE: And do we have any sense of what will happen in the interim? She was supposed to take over in just a few weeks.
HANSEN: So an email from the Provost that came out yesterday said that they, the university will be appointing an interim dean this week. So that's what we know so far.
BRODIE: Alright. Very good. That is Piper Hansen with The State Press at ASU. Piper, thank you.
HANSEN: Yeah. Thanks, guys.
BRODIE: And we should note that Lauren is related to ASU Senior Associate Dean Kristin Gilger at the Cronkite School.
