As a student at the Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics, Lawton Blanchard, who is Black and queer, said she was belittled, called stupid and mocked by physics professor Kurt Bachmann.
When Blanchard reported the professor’s behavior to a counselor, the student was told there wasn’t anything they could do.
Another former student, Dene Betz, reported her science professor, Mark Li, to school leaders after a classroom experiment took an uncomfortable turn. While teaching a lesson on nerve receptors, Li had Betz and another female student go into a closet to test the sensitivity of their nipples, Betz said.
Li, who taught reproductive biology, made inappropriate, sexual comments so regularly students nicknamed him Sex Li to differentiate him from another professor with the same last name, said Morgan Johnston, who graduated from OSSM in 2016.
Following an Oklahoma Watch investigation into how the Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics ignored female employees’ reports of sexual harassment and discrimination, reporter Jennifer Palmer shares stories of former students of the school who came forward with stories of how the misogynistic and toxic culture permeated their experiences, too.
