NEWS
campusreview.com.au
Suit, countersuit over
racism, comments
Woman makes claim after Facebook
posts following incident at lab reserved for
Indigenous students; men respond in kind.
T
wo university students being sued after allegedly making racist
Facebook posts have launched a complaint of their own,
stating the Australian Human Rights Commission discriminated
against them because they were white, heterosexual males.
Calum Thwaites and Jackson Powell are subject to a lawsuit
by Queensland University of Technology administration officer
Cindy Prior. They said that the AHRC breached their human rights
by failing to notify them of the complaint against them for more
than a year.
The two have demanded an apology from the AHRC,
compensation for legal costs understood to already be in the
hundreds of thousands of dollars, and that the commission change
the way it deals with complaints.
In the complaint documents, their lawyer, Tony Morris, stated
the two were “at all times treated by the AHRC with absolute,
unequivocal and flagrant indifference, disregard, contumacy,
hauteur, disdain, vilipendency and insouciance”.
Morris has argued they were treated in that way because they
were white, male heterosexuals who were not active members
of any religious sect or trade union and were not generally
politically outspoken.
The case has stemmed from a May 2013 incident in which
Prior asked three students to leave an Indigenous-only computer
lab at the university, prompting one of them, Alex Wood, who
is also being sued, to post, “Just got kicked out of the unsigned
Indigenous computer room. QUT stopping segregation with
segregation?” on Facebook.
The post attracted a string of comments, some of which were
critical of the existence of the Indigenous-only lab, including one from
Powell who wrote, “I wonder where the white supremacist lab is.”
Thwaites has denied being behind a post on the topic that
included a racial slur.
Prior is not mentioned by name in any of the posts but went on
leave following the incident and is suing the three students and the
university for almost $250,000 in lost wages and general damages,
plus future economic loss. ■
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