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JEFF HOROWITZ: This is one face of diversity at St. Cloud State.

[SINGING]

On a recent Friday night, the Jewish Student Association drew three dozen people to the basement of the Student Center with a promise of Israeli folk dancing lessons. The JSA is one of dozens of cultural groups. There's a Pakistani Students Association, a council of African American students, a Japanese Tea Ceremony club.

Students and faculty of all colors clap, and laugh, and whirl in a giant circle. This scene is just a short walk from the St. Cloud State History Department. It's the department where charges of anti-Semitism have given the school a troubling reputation on diversity issues.

Robbie Hoye is a student in the History Department. She sits with her husband beside her and sifts through a stack of correspondence with various university officials. It chronicles her disappointment.

ROBBIE HOYE: I have two young boys, and I will never allow them to go to this university ever, unless it is cleaned up. I'm embarrassed. I'm actually thinking about moving out of state because I cannot believe that [? Minskyu ?] is letting this happen.

JEFF HOROWITZ: Last year, she joined three professors in a discrimination lawsuit against [? Minskyu, ?] St. Cloud State, President Roy Saigo, and the Dean of Social Sciences. Hoye is not Jewish. She organized a rally one year ago to defend a professor who had spoken up about anti-Semitism in the department.

She found out soon after that her in A that professor's course had become an incomplete. Hoye says Social Science Dean Richard Lewis was holding up her grade. She tried to resolve things on campus. Only when her lawyer raised the matter with the state attorney general was the grade restored.

ROBBIE HOYE: And all I said is, I want this man to be held accountable for what he's doing. And if they would have done it then, if they would have said, Robbie, this is what's going on, we're going to reprimand him in this way, but they didn't do a thing. Nothing was done. And if they would have done it, there would be no lawsuit, as far as my case is concerned.

JEFF HOROWITZ: Indeed, a central point of the other plaintiffs is that Social Science Dean Richard Lewis ran the History Department as he saw fit, and hire administrators then did nothing to rein him in. The argument does not necessarily finger the Dean as an anti-Semite. But professors inside and outside the lawsuit say he may have protected others who are.

Richard Lewis is eager to point out his record on faculty diversity. In the five years he's been dean, Lewis says he's hired more than two dozen faculty of color, and all but one are still on campus. He says he can't track religious diversity. It's not something he knows unless someone tells him. Lewis says that even as he faces the first lawsuit of his career, his blood pressure is at an all-time low.

RICHARD LEWIS: I believe in the long run, I will be vindicated, as will be the University in general. By that time, of course, the public will not be terribly interested, but people will become aware that the University and I acted properly.

JEFF HOROWITZ: For legal reasons, Lewis won't talk about Robbie Hoye or the two history professors who have sued him, but he insists everything is done by the book in the departments he supervises. Lewis says he fields complaints of discrimination and contacts the affirmative action office to get the ball rolling.

Despite allegations to the contrary, he supports creating a minor in Holocaust studies. And he says faculty whose contracts are not renewed are let go because the school can find somebody better for their position, not because they're Jewish.

Lewis says it is largely jilted professors who turn discrimination complaints into public relations fiascos. He says, faculty should talk out complaints and learn how to move on when an employment decision doesn't go their way. Instead, he says, they often turn quickly to the courts and the media.

RICHARD LEWIS: For some faculty members, it's loyalty to themselves, their careers, less to the University. I think there's not always a sense of including, in that kind of decision about going public, or going to the courts, or going to a lawyer, what impact will this have on the University.

ROBERT LAVENDER: I don't really know any academics who like hiring lawyers and suing.

JEFF HOROWITZ: Robert Lavender is the chair of the one-year-old Jewish Faculty Association. He's also the tenured chair of the Anthropology Department.

ROBERT LAVENDER: The level of frustration has been so high, with grievances or complaints simply disappearing from sight, taking so long of never really getting an answer that seems to make sense, that seems to fit with the experience that the individual has had.

JEFF HOROWITZ: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found as much earlier this year when it released a report saying, the affirmative action office suffered a severe lack of credibility. St. Cloud State invited the EEOC to conduct the study.

Affirmative Action Officer Laurel Allen is leaving in June. She says EEOC investigators interviewed her for just one hour before writing a report all about how she does her job. Allen says everyone who's walked through her door in five years has gotten a frank and sincere hearing. If someone insists on an investigation, she's obligated to pursue it. That does not mean she can always meet expectations.

The office is staffed only by Allen and an assistant, and their mandate is limited. The office exists to deal with cases that meet the legal definition of discrimination. That's something Allen thinks many people don't understand.

LAUREL ALLEN: I think that people are pained. I think, and as I have said on a number of cases, I believe to a large extent that there is insensitivity on this campus. Does the insensitivity rise to the level of discrimination and complaint? No, it doesn't. And so the question, again, to me, is the middle.

JEFF HOROWITZ: The vast majority of cases at St. Cloud State appear to fall in this middle ground. None of the faculty interviewed for this series, many of whom have been at the school for 10 years or more, were aware of any decision that had ever resulted in action by the University against the accused.

Allen's office handled 141 discrimination investigations in the past five years. 20 were resolved informally. One is still ongoing. Allen can personally recall one case that resulted in some form of disciplinary action. That was filed by a professor against a student.

That leaves 119 affirmative action investigations, 85% where the Affirmative Action Office does not know what happened. Admittedly, knowing what happened is not Laurel Allen's responsibility. Someone higher up decides what action to take. Usually, a vice president.

This decision-making arrangement has been criticized by faculty and by the EEOC report. They say it dilutes accountability and it means the ultimate arbiter of any complaint will be closely tied to the administration, a conflict of interest in the eyes of many complainants. It also seems to inhibit record keeping.

NPR formally requested the number of instances in the past five years in which faculty had been disciplined because of affirmative action complaints. The school responded that such data is not known. According to state law, information about disciplinary action against public employees should be a matter of public record.

President Roy Saigo does not think those who complain get a runaround from administrators, nor, he says, is the system inherently biased against corrective action. But he says a task force is working with the EEOC to restore confidence in the system.

ROY SAIGO: I'm hoping that the people who have been hurt in the past will come around, and that I could put in place procedures that will help them feel more comfortable. And that in a year or two, that you'll find a totally different place.

JEFF HOROWITZ: The task force may release its findings this summer. The reforms may help set St. Cloud State on a new path. Unfortunately, any changes will be too late for student Robbie Hoye and her faculty co-plaintiffs. Earlier this month, a federal judge dismissed the University's attempt to throw out their case. It seems headed for trial in the fall. They hope to make it a class action suit. Jeff Horowitz, Minnesota Public Radio, St. Cloud.