(RNS) – In 2018, the incoming class at Columbia Theological Seminary, a Presbyterian Church (US) seminary in the tree-lined suburb of Atlanta, was 47% white and 16% black. Just three years later, a 2021 admissions brochure advertised an incoming class made up of more than 64% black and 32% white.

Many black students at CTS credit the Reverend Sam White, a beloved admissions director, who is black, with increasing diversity, and when White was fired on June 21, it sparked a week of recriminations and protests.

The day after the June 16 vacation, White was called to a meeting with President Leanne Van Dyk and told he was no longer an employee of the school, according to White’s attorney, Grace Starling of Barrett & Farahany. . Starling said his client was told the dismissal, which the attorney said occurred without warning, was for “insubordination” – which White disputes. Instead, Starling said White’s firing constituted discrimination and retaliation.

“In the middle of recruiting season, they’re removing their director of admissions,” said Leo Seyij Allen, vice president of the seminary’s student government association. “I used to work in admissions at Candler (school of theology, close to Emory University), so I know from experience that’s not what you do. And you don’t. lightly.

A seminary spokesperson said the school could not comment on legal matters, including “responses to unadjudicated statements or allegations by plaintiff’s attorneys.” The spokesperson added, “Generally, we regret that these limitations often hinder a balanced narrative in public reporting.”

White arrived at the school in March 2020, two months before the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis sparked nationwide protests. In the aftermath, the new admissions director played a vital role in forming the seminary’s Repairing the Breach Fellowship, according to the students.

Launched in June 2020 as part of a series of racial justice commitments, the scholarship covers tuition and fees for all black students admitted to masters programs. Many black students said it was White and the Reverend Brandon Maxwell – a black administrator who resigned in November – who told them about the scholarship and welcomed them to the seminary.

“Dean Maxwell was very adamant that this was where I needed to be,” Allen said. “He told me, you want a place where you will be heard, you will be seen, and that there are faculty and staff and other students who have a similar justice-oriented mindset.”

Maxwell declined to speak with Religion News Service for this story.

Relations between White and the administration deteriorated in September 2021, according to an accusation that White later filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. White said in the filing that he informed Van Dyk that he had been interviewed by a lawyer investigating racial and gender discrimination against a colleague. After informing Van Dyk that he objected to the way his colleague had been treated, White alleges the administration retaliated.

“(M)y supervisors who are aware of my opposition have degraded my work product and my work ethic compared to others at CTS, including the board, the resources I need to do my job were delayed and the tasks were removed from my jurisdiction,” White wrote in the EEOC charge.

The prosecution also alleges that Van Dyk was refused accommodation owned by the white seminary, although the benefit was extended to other senior administrators, including White’s predecessors who were white.

“I believe I was denied this benefit based on my race/color and in retaliation for objecting to discriminatory behavior,” White wrote in the EEOC filing.

White, who filed his original charge with the EEOC in February, amended the charge last week to include his dismissal.

“At every turn, he reported instances of discrimination or retaliation and received no type of institutional support, which ultimately forced him to contact a lawyer,” Starling said.

In response to questions from RNS, the school’s director of communications shared a document highlighting the school’s social justice efforts and demographics, including that 44% of faculty, 37% of staff, and 31% of the board are people of color. In a statement, the school said, “We are confident that we have remained true to our mission to develop loyal and effective leaders and to conduct the affairs of the school in a carefully thoughtful, candid and fair manner.”

In the fall, the school will welcome its first non-white president.

RELATED: Columbia Theological Seminary students oppose firing of black administrator

On Tuesday (June 28), a week after White left, a dozen students gathered outside the seminary signboard in what flyers called a “Blacklash march.”

“This protest is bigger than Pastor Sam. This ‘Blacklash’ is systemic,” the Reverend John DeLoney, president of the African Heritage Students Association, said at the protest. DeLoney decried Maxwell’s resignation, which the students say was forced, despite being the main architect of the Repairing the Breach scholarship. DeLoney also noted the 2019 firing of Reverend Ruth-Aimée Belonni-Rosario Govens, who is Hispanic, as seminary enrollment officer.

Other students shared concerns about whether they were truly welcome at the seminary in light of these departures.

DeLoney and Allen told RNS the protest replaced a meeting with Van Dyk, who they said ignored their requests to meet. “We have no commitment that there will even be a reunion,” Allen said. “I am appalled and amazed by that alone. That tells me you’re not taking us seriously.

The acting replacements for Maxwell and Smith are both white men, and DeLoney and Allen said they fear the black leaders who provided key support to the black students they recruited could disappear.

“We feel like everyone in the administration who had the authority to bring in black people is now gone, and we’re now concerned about the sustainability of this scholarship going forward,” DeLoney said.

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