What’s going on at KSU? For one thing, lawsuits alleging harassment and misconduct.

Kentucky State University, where President M. Christopher Brown II suddenly resigned Tuesday, has been fighting a half-dozen lawsuits this year containing various allegations of misconduct by school officials.

Among the claims made in the suits:

▪ Xavier Dillard, a KSU alumnus who helped run the college’s Student Support Services, said he was fired in 2018 for calling attention to the sexual harassment of students by several school officials, all now fired or resigned.

Dillard says he lost his job because he advocated for two students whose harassment complaints were being swept under the rug by administrators. KSU says it fired him for violating a federal law, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, by including the students’ names in an email he sent about their allegations.

In two separate rulings, Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd has denied KSU’s motions to dismiss Dillard’s claim, clearing the way for a jury trial.

“I do think there is a tremendous question as to whether Kentucky State used a pretext in order to fire someone who was trying to bring to light a truly outrageous situation at the university,” Shepherd said at a May 10 hearing.

▪ One of the students Dillard befriended is suing KSU under the pseudonym “John Doe,” alleging that he was denied the college experience for which he paid tuition and fees. A jury trial is scheduled for next January.

Doe said he was harassed in his junior year by KSU’s director of admissions, Justin Mathis, during a recruiting trip to Washington, D.C., in late September 2017. Mathis insisted he and Doe share a hotel room, where he made sexually unwelcome advances, and the sexual harassment continued back in Frankfort, Doe said in his suit.

Doe said he began complaining about Mathis to KSU on Oct. 1, 2017. But nobody seemed to investigate his complaint until five months later, on Feb. 27, 2018, when his mother called Brown’s office to demand that action be taken, he said. Distraught by the experience, Doe quit KSU and moved back home to Ohio.

Mathis resigned shortly after Doe’s mother contacted the president, on March 1, 2018.

▪ Holly J. Clark claimed in a lawsuit that she was fired as the college’s director of auxiliary services in 2018 in a fight over KSU’s award of a dining services contract. Clark said Brown favored one bidder, Sodexo, even though another bidder, Thompson Hospitality, consistently did best when several companies’ proposals were competitively scored.

KSU paid $150,000 this year to settle Clark’s suit.

▪ Damien Hodge claimed in a lawsuit that he was wrongfully fired in 2019 as executive director of KSU’s Office of Building, Recruitment, Enrollment and Discovery Services. Hodge alleged a list of unprofessional conduct by other KSU officials, including legal problems, and “a pattern of hostility in the working environment.”

“For example, the president of KSU would refer to white females as ‘kitchen bitch’ and discuss the way other females looked, using terms such as ratchet, ugly and dirty,” Hodge said in his suit.

▪ Geraldine Q. Young, an associate professor of nursing, said KSU placed her on leave in 2019 and later fired her after she expressed ethical concerns to her bosses about how the school misspent federal funds and admitted unqualified students into a graduate nursing program that she directed, in order “to increase the numbers.”

▪ Father-and-son Oscar Downs Jr. and Oscar “Trey” Downs III were the coach and assistant coach for KSU’s women’s softball team until they were fired in 2018, ostensibly for violations of the school’s nepotism policy. The men sued KSU and claimed they really were fired because of a sexual harassment complaint made against them — which they denied — by a women’s softball player.

In court documents, KSU said it placed Downs and his son on leave in 2017 and conducted at least two investigations of the harassment complaint. The school said it concluded in 2018 that there was insufficient evidence to make a finding on the claims.

The Downs’ lawsuit was dismissed earlier this year, but they have indicated plans to appeal.

Brown declined in a May interview to discuss the claims made about him and the school in the litigation. But in court responses to the suits, KSU generally has denied their accuracy and asked judges to dismiss them.