STEPHANIE MALTER Accused Him Of Stalking After A One-Day FB Chat. Occidental’s Process Led Him To Suicidal Overdose. His Family Sues.
Two Occidental students had an extended Facebook chat for one day. The exchange was initiated by Stephanie Malter and ended after she said she no longer wished to participate in the conversation. Later, she would tell school administrators that the male student stalked her, according to a lawsuit filed in California superior court. He was found responsible for stalking by Occidental and believed he would be barred from law school or medical school based on the finding. The male student, who had known depression issues, overdosed on multiple prescription drugs and died. His family is now suing the school, the administrators who conducted the investigation, and their son’s accuser for the wrongful death of their son, as well as multiple charges that the school discriminated against their son because of his gender and denied him due process….The male student, Davis Xu, was accused after the female student, identified as Stephanie Malter in publicly available court documents learned that he had called her a “b****” in a private conversation with another student, according to his family’s lawsuit.
Occidental informed Xu that he had been accused of sending Malter Facebook messages even after she asked him to stop. Though Xu insisted Malter only filed the complaint after she learned Xu had called her a “b****” to a third-party, he was investigated for stalking, his family claims in their lawsuit. Mark Hathaway, attorney for Xu’s family, gave a brief statement on the situation. “The family is devastated and had hoped to avoid litigation,” Hathaway said.
Xu is not the only male student to die following what he and his family believed was an unfair adjudication process. Two months after Xu’s death in February 2017, University of Texas at Arlington student Thomas Klocke took his own life after being accused of typing homophobic slurs to a gay classmate. Klocke said the classmate actually made sexual advances toward him, and insisted he did not do what he was accused of. He was found responsible and put on disciplinary probation for the rest of his college career and told he would have a mark on his record, even though the school acknowledged there was no evidence for their decision.
As with Xu, according to court documents, Klocke believed this mark on his record would keep him out of graduate school, and he took his own life.
dailywire By Ashe Schow
