Morehouse College Investigates Sexual Misconduct After Students' Videos

In separate posts on Twitter this week, two young men who identified themselves as students at Morehouse College detailed their experiences with a staff member at the college who they said had been sexually inappropriate with them. They complained of sexualized comments and inappropriate references to their sexuality.

The videos were shared thousands of times, leading to an investigation by the college and prompting a vocal online conversation about the handling of sexual misconduct at Morehouse, an all-male, historically black institution in Atlanta.

In statements this week, Morehouse said it was investigating the complaints and had placed the staff member on unpaid administrative leave. The staff member, DeMarcus Crews, is identified on the college’s website as a member of its student services leadership team. He is an alumnus of the college who has worked there since he graduated in 2015, according to his LinkedIn page.

Crews did not respond to an email request for comment.

By Thursday, the college announced it was expanding its investigation to include additional complaints it had received against other employees.

“We have begun investigating all new complaints that have been reported over the past 24 hours,” the institution said on Twitter. It included the phone number for an anonymous ethics hotline.

On Friday, Aileen Dodd, a Morehouse spokeswoman, declined to answer questions about the number or nature of the complaints received.

“The education and development of the men of Morehouse is our top priority, and the College will take the necessary action to protect the safety of its students,” the college said in a statement.

The allegations surfaced late Tuesday in a video posted by Michael Key, who was identified by his lawyer as a 20-year-old entering his junior year at Morehouse.

In the video, Key said that, starting in his first year as a student, Crews made sexual comments to him, hugged him, pinched his cheek and tried to “force me to come out about my sexuality.”

“It got to the point where I went into a really bad depression,” he said.

He said he reported the behavior to Morehouse, but it did not take action.

Morehouse is consistently ranked near the top of the list of more than 100 schools designated by the Department of Education as historically black colleges and universities, or HBCUs.

“This story has pierced the hearts of graduates of HBCUs,” his lawyer, Tiffany Simmons, said in a statement Friday. “It is a disgrace that a black institution of higher learning would allow this to happen and it be swept under a rug.”

A few hours after Key’s video was posted, a second student reposted it with a video of his own. That student, who identified himself by name and as a first-year student at Morehouse, also accused Crews of inappropriate behavior. He alleged that Crews falsely told another student that he had come out to him as gay.

The second student did not respond to messages seeking an interview Friday.

The videos prompted a broader conversation online about the environment for those who experience or report sexual misconduct at Morehouse, a small community of about 2,200 students. The conversation follows a reckoning at other college campuses across the country, where issues surrounding Title IX, the federal law that protects against sex discrimination, have become central.

Morehouse has said it has zero tolerance for campus sexual harassment and assault.

In 2018, the college’s president, David A. Thomas, said Morehouse had made progress on the issue in recent years, including hiring a Title IX coordinator.

The Title IX coordinator, Terraine Bailey, is no longer in that position.

Dodd, the university spokeswoman, declined to comment Friday about Bailey’s departure, citing the confidentiality of personnel matters. She said Morehouse’s vice president for human resources, Cassandra Tarver-Ross, was handling Title IX matters on an interim basis.

Tarver-Ross did not immediately respond to phone and email requests for comment.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.