Black students shushed at school library while whites were ignored, lawsuit says

Librarians shushed some black students while giving a pass to white students, says a civil rights lawsuit against Modesto Junior College and the Yosemite Community College District.

Upset, the black students paid a visit to a college dean and lodged written complaints. Instead of helping them, administrators barred them from the library and slapped them with formal discipline for “disruptive behavior,” the lawsuit says.

The action was filed in Fresno’s federal court by Debra Berry, 57, a grandmother and former student who since has left MJC. She was disciplined along with others, most in their late teens and early 20s when the incidents occurred in the fall of 2015 at the east campus library, Berry said.

A spokeswoman on Wednesday said the district has not been served with legal notice of the lawsuit.

Librarians and a security guard confronted black students for being too noisy and grouping in more than four people per table, the lawsuit says. School staff then took photographs of the black students and demanded school identification, Berry said. Some were on the verge of tears when she gathered them and walked them to the dean’s office, she said.

“They were only picking on certain kids” while ignoring similarly sized groups of white students, Berry said. “If these were my own children, would I step back and let it happen? I don’t care if they were white children; what (staff) was doing was wrong.”

Eleven students filed complaints, several with descriptions of being bullied by librarians and security. One said a student library worker who is white told the black students she had been directed to keep an eye on them.

Soon after, an associate dean sent Berry and others a notice requiring that they meet with him to discuss the matter. When they didn’t, several received letters suspending their library privileges and placing them on one year of probation.

The discipline was a clear “effort to intimidate plaintiffs and other students from following through with this civil rights complaint,” Berry said in her lawsuit.

“We were retaliated against,” she said Monday in an interview.

Some students were told that pursuing action against the school could jeopardize their participation in sports and cheerleading, Berry said. Photographs of black students were emailed to coaches, the lawsuit says.

The document is structured as a class-action complaint to allow other plaintiffs to join the lawsuit. Berry, relying on help from a friend, filed it without consulting a lawyer. U.S. District Judge Michael Seng found several legal problems and dismissed irrelevant claims related to Fourteenth Amendment due process rights, Eighth Amendment inmate rights, and claims related to the photographs and sexual harassment. He also erased class-action potential.

But Seng allowed Berry, at this point, to pursue claims related to the alleged race-based discrimination and retaliation.

Berry, a former aircraft assembly line worker, said she’s never been involved in activism.

“I’m a peacemaker,” she said. “In high school, I hated fights, gossip and trouble. But when there is wrongdoing, I’m going to speak up on it.”

This story was originally published June 29, 2017 at 5:46 PM with the headline "Black students shushed at school library while whites were ignored, lawsuit says."