In addition to the timeline of efforts to remove Dr. Driskill from OSU, I wanted to share the details of my contribution to the complaint that is being handled by OSU's office of Equal Opportunity & Access. The first installment made public the cover letter summarizing my complaint. The second installment covered my second year in the PhD program (2018-2019). The last post covered my third year (2019-2020). This final post covers the events of my fourth year (2020-2021).

​While I anonymize the faculty members and students who were only tangentially involved in the events leading up to my departure from the program, I have chosen to name the faculty members and former students who were a part of the problem. I do so because my silence did not afford me any protection when I was in the program, and my naming people and describing what happened in no way approximates the level of harm that they caused that led me to give up the degree that I worked towards for a decade. One of the things that I have learnt from transformative justice movements is that there is a vast difference between holding oneself and others accountable  and punishment.

In addition to the timeline of efforts to remove Dr. Driskill from OSU, I wanted to share the details of my contribution to the complaint that is being handled by OSU's office of Equal Opportunity & Access. The first installment made public the cover letter summarizing my complaint and the second installment covered my second year in the PhD program (2018-2019). This post covers my third year (2019-2020). The next post will cover my fourth and final year (2020-2021).

​While I anonymize the faculty members and students who were only tangentially involved in the events leading up to my departure from the program, I have chosen to name the faculty members and former students who were a part of the problem. I do so because my silence did not afford me any protection when I was in the program, and my naming people and describing what happened in no way approximates the level of harm that they caused that led me to give up the degree that I worked towards for a decade. One of the things that I have learnt from transformative justice movements is that there is a vast difference between holding oneself and others accountable  and punishment.

In addition to the timeline of efforts to remove Dr. Driskill from OSU, I wanted to share the details of my contribution to the complaint that is being handled by OSU's office of Equal Opportunity & Access. The first installment made public the cover letter summarizing my complaint. This is the second installment, which covers my second year in the PhD program (2018-2019). I have also posted the third (2019-2020) and fourth (2020-2021) installments.

While I anonymize the faculty members and students who were only tangentially involved in the events leading up to my departure from the program, I have chosen to name the faculty members and former students who were a part of the problem. I do so because my silence did not afford me any protection when I was in the program, and my naming people and describing what happened in no way approximates the level of harm that they caused that led me to give up the degree that I worked towards for a decade. One of the things that I have learnt from transformative justice movements is that there is a vast difference between holding oneself and others accountable  and punishment.

In addition to the timeline of efforts to remove Dr. Driskill from the Oregon State University faculty, I wanted to provide details about the complaint that I submitted to OSU's Office of Equal Opportunity and Access. This post is the first installment, which makes public the cover letter for my complaint. It was emailed to Ms. Roni Sue (OSU's Equal Opportunity & Access), Dr. Rogers (Dean for the College of Liberal Arts), and Dr. Bernardin (Director of the School of Language, Culture, & Society). Subsequent posts will cover events that took place in my 2nd year in the PhD program (2018-2019),  my 3rd year (2019-2020), and my 4th and final year (2020-2021).

I created this timeline because I wanted people to be able to learn about the efforts to remove Dr. Driskill from the Oregon State University faculty--a movement that is taking place on multiple fronts--in one place. Although I and many other former/current WGSS graduate students only became aware of this issue recently, there are Native people in and outside of the academy that have been aware of Dr. Driskill's persistent fraudulent identity claims and have been working to address the harm caused by their pernicious actions for at least a decade. Non-native scholars such as myself have a responsibility to  take this issue seriously, to center the work of queer Indigenous scholars in lieu of a "representative one voice" (to use Dr. Jodi Bird's phrase), and to disrupt the academy as a "pretendian factory" (to quote Dr. Liza Black). My hope is that this particular case may offer insights that can be used in other situations.