"It was gratifying to the president and to the college that OCR did not seek a site-based investigation. We've been in dialogue with OCR and some of the assurances we agreed to were already being implemented," Nelson said.
The complaining professor considers the OCR agreement to be a positive step for the college.
"I think it's a very good development. [Bluefield administrators] are having to make amends," Olmsted said.
Although Olmsted said he would prefer to see the institution both reinstate the former Black faculty members whom he alleges unfairly lost their jobs and hire a Black president, he cautioned, "My feeling is that there were wrongs committed that won't be corrected."
This past academic year, Bluefield State College had no Black faculty for the first time in its 102-year history. The college has a 7 percent Black student enrollment, and it receives more than $1 million annually in federal funding because of its status as a historically Black institution.
In January, Olmsted was fired from his tenured teaching position at the college after he refused to come onto the Bluefield campus because he feared for his safety. He still does not work for the institution, and the OCR complaint does not involve his employment status because that changed after the complaint was filed.
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