Auburn University is under fire as two former graduate students and three faculty, one of them the former dean of Auburn’s prestigious Honors College, have filed a federal sexual discrimination lawsuit alleging a “frat house” environment at a university research project as well as a relentless campaign of retaliation against the faculty who stood up for the students by reporting it.
According to the lawsuit, Kaitlin Connelly and Marlene Walters were doctoral students and graduate research assistants at Auburn working on a federally funded habitat management initiative, the Inventory and Conservation Planning Project (ICP2) in 2024 when they faced an increasingly oversexualized and toxic atmosphere while the project’s administrator, Jonathan Valente, did nothing to stop it. Actually, according to the complaint, Valente contributed to it by favoring the male participants while denigrating Connelly and Walters.
Connelly, who is a lesbian, and Walters, who identifies as non-binary and transgender, say they faced constant ridicule, sex jokes, unvarnished chauvinism and even nudity created a “frat house” atmosphere within this field project in Auburn’s College of Forestry, Wildlife, and Environment.
Meanwhile the male participants received blatant preferential treatment, the claim states, including Valente turning a blind eye to one male supervisor who openly flaunted having a sexual relationship with one of the research assistants, though such relationships are expressly forbidden by university policy.
When Connelly and Walters complained, backed up by three members of the faculty—Gitzen, Lepczyk Fantle-Lepczyk—all five felt the full force of university administration, they say. Connelly and Walters allege they were run out of both the program and the university while Gitzen, Lepczyk and Fantle-Lepczyk had their careers sabotaged.
Gitzen and Lepczyk, who had just finished a successful stint as dean of Auburn’s prestigious Honors College, had been designated as co-principal investigators for the project but were removed from ICP2 as Valente accused them of “interfering with his leadership” by reporting their concerns about the gender discrimination and sexual misconduct going on at the project. Likewise, Fantle-Lepczyk faced serious retaliation including isolation and the denial of research dollars since deciding to stand up for Walters and becoming a whistleblower.
“A prestigious research project is not a dive bar, and it shouldn’t involve misogynist hazing. No professor ought to make themselves a target for standing up for vulnerable students,” Davis said. “There are some who say the clock is turning back on our campuses—but it can’t be this far back.”
Connelly and Walters, in addition to Auburn faculty Robert Gitzen, Christopher Lepczyk and Jean Fantle-Lepczyk are represented by Artur Davis and Jerilyn Gardner of HKM Employment Attorneys.
