Federal agency will investigate alleged harassment against Somali students
St. Cloud Superintendent Steve Jordahl. (MPR Photo/Ambar Espinoza)by Madeleine Baran, Minnesota Public Radio,
Ambar Espinoza, Minnesota Public Radio
St. Paul, Minn. — The U.S. Department of Education has launched an investigation into allegations of harassment of Somali students in St. Cloud and Owatonna, agency officials confirmed on Tuesday.
A Muslim advocacy group had requested federal intervention, charging that the school districts failed to stop anti-Muslim harassment against Somali high school students.
“Our goal is to ensure a safe and healthy environment for all students,” said Taneeza Islam, civil rights director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “Decades after the beginning of the civil rights movement, no student should be constantly subjected to racial slurs or harassment at school.”
Education Department spokesman Justin Hamilton said the complaints meet a basic threshold standard to proceed with an investigation.
“We take a look at the merits of the complaint. We take a look at the evidence presented and some of the facts as they’ve been laid out,” he said. “So again, just to be clear, we have made no determination of wrongdoing.”
Hamilton says the department looks forward to working with local education officials at the two school districts to bring clarity and resolve the issues. He says details around the investigation and its activities are forthcoming.
The advocacy group, known as CAIR-MN, has argued that the school districts violated the federal Civil Rights Act when they allegedly failed to intervene to stop repeated harassment against Somali students.
Steve Jordahl, the St. Cloud schools superintendent, said he is not surprised with the department’s decision to follow up on the complaint. He added that the district conducted its own internal investigation, which found that most of the complaints lacked sufficient evidence.
“We were just hoping that we didn’t have to go through this. We thought we did enough with our own internal investigations and maybe that would be a way to resolve some of this, but we understand that the complaint is still out there and that it’s going to be looked into,” Jordahl said.
In separate letters sent to both school districts, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights said CAIR’s request meets the technical guidelines for filing a complaint.
Both letters state that the decision to investigate “in no way implies that OCR has made a determination with regard to its merits.”
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