Six people from student government come forward with serious allegations
On Tuesday, Feb. 18, in a recorded on-record interview with Margaret Hamilton, the President of Lane Community College, she declined to comment on the nature of the former Director of Student Engagement Donyel Hill’s sudden and quiet departure from his position between November 2019 and January 2020.
Two days later on Feb. 20 at 3:08 p.m., The Torch reached out directly to Hill through a call to his cellphone.
He answered but declined to comment on both his sudden departure from LCC and allegations made on-record by former members of the Associated Students of Lane Community College Student Government and the Student Activity Fee Committee — two student-led groups that Hill directly supervised.
Hill was hired in February 2019 in a position to raise student empowerment on campus.
According to a post on LCC’s website, “[Hill] has a Doctorate in Urban Educational Leadership from Morgan State University; a Master of Science in adult and continuing education and a Bachelor of Science in Liberal Arts, both from Coppin State University.”
Prior to coming to LCC, he had “taught and led a variety of student-focused service programs at Prince George’s Community College, Community College of Baltimore County, Academy of College and Career Exploration, College of Liberal Arts at Morgan State University, and Coppin State University.”
Having someone in the position of Director of Student Engagement is integral to the moving gears that are the ASLCCSG and SAFC. In addition to overseeing the two student-run groups — who, annually, allocate $56 from each student enrolled to various student organizations — the director, as per the original ZipRecruiter job posting in 2018, is to:
- Assist student leaders and staff/faculty advisors in fundraising procedures and money management in alignment with the State of Oregon and Lane policy.
- Serve as budget authority and assist student leaders to effectively manage student activity funds and fundraising accounts.
- Assist ASLCCSG and student organizations to develop and maintain respectful positive relationships with other campus entities; liaise and mediate to resolve conflict.
In the role of supporting students, the director’s duties are also bulleted in the listing.
Hill occupied the position for only a year on paper. In actuality, Hill had not been on LCC’s premises since late-Nov. 2019 according to Dean of Student Success Lida Herburger who said, “I hired him — because we hadn’t had a dedicated director for many years.”
As reported on Feb. 17, Hill’s office next to the Snack Shack in Building 1 was locked, the lights off and his nameplate removed from the exterior wall.
Following his refusal to give a statement, The Torch sent a text message a few minutes later at 3:11 p.m. on Feb. 11 once again inviting him to address a number of allegations leveled against him by multiple former members from both the ASLCCSG and SAFC. He has not responded.
Statements started streaming in a couple days following The Torch’s initial reporting prompting the questions to Hamilton.
President Hamilton in her interview said, “We cannot comment on personnel actions. I can say he doesn’t work here anymore and the position is being posted immediately.”
When asked specifically about Hill’s departure and the quietness surrounding it she declined to comment but was remis about the allegations. She added that “regardless of why you leave an employer, right, you really wanna leave, you need to have the ability to start over wherever you go, and the fact that there are rumors is a shame.”
The first to come forward with serious allegations was Nick Keough. As the President of ASLCCSG from January 2019 until June of that same year, he worked directly with Hill.
“Donyel [Hill], was always a barrier to myself and my staff advocating for the betterment of students whether that related to tuition, student fees, campus events, and much more. Furthermore, Donyel created a toxic and unsafe work-space within ASLCCSG spaces on campus,” Keough said.
Keough added that “Donyel [Hill] was explicitly transphobic, ableist, rude, dishonest, played favorites, and relied heavily on manipulation, gaslighting, and bullying to get his way.”
Amanda Blauer served as the Clothing Stash Coordinator from August 2018 until September 2019. In that position, she, too, worked directly with Hill.
She said, as several others did also, that working with Hill was pleasant at first.
“However, in the next nine months of working with him, I became traumatized. I was left wondering who I was as an advocate and as a leader,” she stated.
“I witnessed and was affected by these actions: he withheld people’s paychecks, he made statements of being the one in charge, he never let us feel like our work was enough, he made decisions without our input,” she said.
Chavon Wright, who worked as both the Multicultural Program Coordinator and Vice President of External Affairs for the Black Student Union, talked about the difficulty of working with Hill.
“In general, he consistently blamed historical monetary discrepancies on student autonomy and expressed his desire to reduce student power,” she said.
Wright added in regard to the SAFC process that, “[Hill] usurped the voting process and disallowed us the time we needed to revise the process and ensure that student voices were heard in the decision of how to spend our student activity fund[s].”
Caleb Peterson, a former senator within ASLCCSG, spoke with The Torch about his experiences and stated that Hill used “gross” language in the workplace.
Peterson added that Hill made the ASLCCSG’s treasure to go through him before accessing student government funds. “Even Liz, our office manager, came out and said, ‘that is not okay.’ Obviously, we didn’t have information coming in about money and where it was going.”
During the student government’s first work-session, Hill talked about things changing and said the previous years’ ASLCCSG had “slipped.”
Ryan Freire, ASLCCSG’s Treasurer for the 2018-2019 school year, said that “the biggest problems with student funds have been implemented by people who have no real accountability to the students, or their student government.”
In speaking about what he witnessed between Hill and Ken Dinet, then the Club Chair for the Council of Clubs, he said, “[Hill] had [Dinet] dealing with some of the financial things surrounding student funds, like filling out fund transfers from the general club pool to specific clubs.”
Freire added that, “[these were] things that the previous club admin did but the [person who took over] wasn’t trained on yet.”
Ken Dinet, the former Chairperson of the Council of Clubs, said, “[Hill] also spent so much [of Council of Clubs] money on remodeling the Center for Student Engagement that was less than a few years old and didn’t need remodeling.”
Dinet restated Hill’s position overseeing SAFC and said that, “with that knowledge he was able to manipulate accounts.”
In regards to the intentional mishandling of funds, Dinet recalled, “I remember one day being in his office as he changed numbers to reflect more money in ASLCCSG’s account and less money in [the Council of Club’s] account.”
Dinet cites Donyel Hill as the reason he and his daughter no longer attend LCC.
He alleged verbal abuse, “My daughter and I both have learning disabilities and he knew that and used his power to keep us scared and ultimately pushed us out of our roles as student leaders and students.”
“The man ruined my school career and made my job as Council of Clubs chairman impossible to do. He always had his thumb on funds,” Dinet stated.
Members of The Torch’s editorial staff have both sought after, and have received, statements both off-record and, as read above, on-record from members of clubs, the ASLCCSG and the SAFC. Many have independently corroborated each other.
Multiple public records requests have been filed to receive documents and correspondences within both the administration and the student-led government. The Torch has received one request and will post updates in light of new information.
