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A NYC college lecturer is out of a job after confusing the names of two Black students during class.
Former Fordham University lecturer Christopher Trogan was let go back in October after a series of emails and other communications in connection to misnaming two Black students surfaced.
According to the Fordham Observer, Trogan, a lecturer in the English Department, mixed up the students' names during a September 24 class, after which the students emailed Trogan to express how they felt about the misnaming.
In response, Trogan sent out a mass email to all of his students –– not just the students involved –– calling the mix-up an "innocent mistake" and blamed it on a "confused brain" because they both arrived late to class while he was reading at the lecturer podium.
"The offended students assumed my mistake was because I confused that student with another Black student," Trogan wrote in the email. "I have done my best to validate and reassure the offended student that I made a simple, human error. It has nothing to do with race."
One of the students involved told The Observer the mix-up happened more than once.
"I felt really disrespected," one of the students told the publication anonymously, stating that the mix-up happened during four different classes Trogan taught.
"I did not feel heard because every time he (misnamed me) I would tell him, and it just seemed like he would brush it off or that he did not care."
In his email to students, Trogan encouraged them to relay their complaints to school administration and noted that he devoted his "entire life" to "issues of justice, equality, and inclusion," describing examples in depth.
He ended the email stating that he was willing to give up his job at the school if the students felt they were discriminated against.
"Depending on your response to officials above, I may –– or may not –– be your professor in class next week. It's all up to you," he wrote.
Chantel Sims, the other student involved, said she didn't report Trogan and felt that all the mass communications were "excessive."
"Like all you needed to do was say sorry and it would have been fine," Sims said.
Administrators won't comment on all the circumstances around Trogan's termination and some students still have questions about the termination and felt the lecturer did not do anything wrong.
The anonymous student involved said she was surprised the school responded so quickly to the incident and in terminating the lecturer.
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