Two former professors are suing Southwestern College for retaliation after reporting racial discrimination.
It’s not the first time Southwestern employees have been accused of racism. In 2018, a University of Southern California assessment of the school found “a palpable climate of anti-Blackness.”
Some alumni said accountability is long overdue.
Lowreen Azin enrolled in the dental hygiene program in 2016. It was her dream.
“It sounds a bit weird, but I thoroughly enjoy watching the calcified plaque break away from the enamel,” she said with a laugh.
But on the first day of the program her professor, Kesa Waddell, said something odd.
“She said, ‘You know, 10, 15 years ago, you look around, you just see so many blondes,’” Azin recounted. “‘And now, I look around the program, there’s just so many brunettes. It’s just so funny.’”
Azin, who is Middle Eastern, said it was the first of many racially-tinged comments made by Waddell, who is white.
“Like she’ll say it, but with a joke, you know? To where you would have to question yourself, like, ‘Wait, did she really just say that?’” Azin said.
Waddell — and college leadership — declined to comment on the claims in this story.
Azin said another day, Waddell told the students: “‘Hey, if you guys see a big Black man that’s fixing the AC, don’t be afraid. That is the dean’s assistant.”
“Some of us looked at each other like, ‘What is this lady saying? What is she trying to say, more so?’” she remembered.
The indirectness made Azin question herself.
“Is it just me? Is it in my head? So I googled, and I found a whole slew of reviews and complaints.”
Ratemyprofessors.com — a website where students can write public reviews of their professors — is full of complaints against Waddell, including racism.
Azin said she tried to talk to the program director, Jean Honny.
“She didn't even let me get a word in,” Azin said. “She said, ‘Listen, I know what this is about, and I'm going to tell you this right now. If you are going to be successful in private practice, gossip is only going to get you fired.”
Honny also declined to comment for this story.
That remark from Honny scared Azin, she said. She felt like she was up against a power structure that could break her dream.
“You're vulnerable. This is your livelihood. You've gone through so many years of school,” Azin explained. “You're at the mercy of these people. You can't do much. You can't say what you want to say. You can't react how you want to react.”
Azin failed out of her first year.
She said Waddell kept losing her assignments — a common theme in online reviews by Waddell’s students.
It cost Azin a year of her life, she said, waiting to reapply to the program. It embarrassed her.
That time in her life became a blur.
“There’s a lot of things that I kind of just buried because I’ve never experienced something like that,” she said.
Her classmate, Nelly Ramirez, said she’s buried it, too.
But one incident with Waddell remains fresh in Ramirez’s mind years later.
She and Azin were preparing to educate Chula Vista schoolchildren about how sugary drinks and candy affect dental health.
Ramirez said Waddell commented: “‘Don’t you think you should be talking to them about eating tacos and burritos, instead?’”
Ramirez said in the moment, she froze.
“How do you process that?” she said.
The students could confide, Azin said, in two professors: Linda Lukacs and Karen Kubischta.
“They never belittled you, never made you feel less than,” Azin said. “They listened, they heard with an open heart and treated you like a human being. I owe them everything. I know it's not just me. All of the other students can attest to that.”
Many students brought their experiences to Lukacs and Kubischta.
They were afraid if they reported racist treatment to the school, they would fail the program.
So Lukacs and Kubischta brought a Title IX complaint — a complaint of discrimination based on a protected class, including race — on their behalf. They attached anonymous letters from nearly a dozen students. It names several faculty and staff, including Waddell and Honny.
It describes professors speaking to students who have accents “painfully slow and loud”; a U.S.-born student copying an immigrant student’s work and receiving a much higher score; students unable to sleep or concentrate in class because of racist treatment.
The complaint also includes the professors’ own testimonies, like Honny warning them to “be careful” when dealing with “those people” — referring to African American and Muslim students.
In the complaint, Lukacs and Kubischta also voiced fear that they would be retaliated against.
According to their recent lawsuit, that’s exactly what happened.
The school started changing their hours and fabricating violations against them, their lawyer Arash Sadat said.
The school pulled Lukacs off a class she had taught for a decade, he said, and replaced her with a younger, more inexperienced teacher.
The school denied both professors remote teaching during the pandemic, as many other instructors were doing.
And then, the lawsuit claims, administrators put them both on leave.
“The reason they're doing this,” Sadat said, “is to get rid of these two professors who they believe to be a problem.
If so, it ultimately worked. Both quit.
When reached by phone, Kesa Waddell — one of the professors named in the Title IX complaint — said she retired recently.
Sadat said before she retired, Waddell received multiple promotions, taking Kubischta’s old position as clinical coordinator. Jean Honny — the program director named in the complaint — took a position as dental hygiene program director at San Joaquin Valley College in Riverside.
Southwestern College declined to comment on or confirm any personnel or ongoing legal matters.
Even today, former students like Azin said they’re still nervous to speak, but feel they must.
“For all the other students, we have to say something,” she said. “This has been going on for so many years.”
On Friday, KPBS will look at the equity efforts of Southwestern College leaders since the 2018 USC report finding “a palpable climate of anti-Blackness” on the campus, and hear from current Black students.
