Employee to sue Diné College for harassment

TSAILE

Diné College has a lawsuit from an employee inbound.

After a performance of the play “When the Warriors Were Called” home at the El Morro Theater in Gallup on April 28, a lawyer for the director and writer of the play, John Templin, announced that he would be suing the college.

“We have already gone to the labor commission,” Gallup lawyer David Jordan told the Navajo Times. “We have already filed a harassment case with the Office of Navajo Labor Relations.”

Based on a complaint from a student who acted in the play, but was cut from the cast, the college began an investigation into Templin. Jordan sees it as harassment, possibly retaliatory, and part of a kind of purge of personnel at the college perceived as favorable to removed college president Maggie George.

“It’s kind of, ‘We run the school now. We don’t like the fact that the old administration looked favorably on you, so we’re going to exercise the power to harass you if we choose to do that,’” Jordan said.

He said there is a history of harassment of employees at the college.

“Diné College is one of the poorest administered employers on the Navajo Nation,” Jordan said. “I am an employment lawyer. I have more complaints, probably, against Diné College than any other employers on the Navajo Nation.”

He said the case against Templin resulted from a student complaint created after the theater program took the play to a competition in March, and that the complaint lacked substance.

“Coming back from the trip, the student files basically a complaint that says, ‘Hey, he was rude to me.’ None of the allegations are any more serious than rudeness,” he said.

“I think that there are people within the school that are jealous of his success, and they want to undo it,” Jordan said. “They don’t like the fact that he is bringing all this positive publicity to the college and the students, and they’re trying to undermine him.”

Jordan repeatedly called the complaint by the student against Templin ridiculous, and the consequences imposed by the college harassment.

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