Former student sues WSU over racial incident

SPOKANE, Wash. — A former student is suing Washington State University over its handling of a 2015 racial incident.

Dominique Stewart, who is black, says she was humiliated on the night of Feb. 21, 2015, while waiting for a friend in front of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity in Pullman.

The lawsuit says a white member of the fraternity allegedly shouted racist and misogynistic slurs before slamming a door in Stewart's face.

The Spokesman-Review says Stewart was 18 and a freshman at the time.

The lawsuit was filed last month in federal court in Western Washington. It claims that school officials engaged in "victim-blaming" and didn't do enough to protect Stewart from a "viral upstir of racism" that followed.

Stewart graduated from WSU last year.

The student who made the slurs was expelled.

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Associated Press