Evan James McCarty, who harassed former Student Government President Taylor Dumpson on social media after she was targeted in a racist hate crime, agreed in a court settlement Tuesday to receive “anti-hate training,” apologize to Dumpson in writing and through a video chat and publicly renounce white supremacy and other forms of bigotry.
Dumpson, who served as the first black woman president of SG, filed a lawsuit against McCarty in April, along with Andrew Anglin, the publisher of the neo-Nazi publication The Daily Stormer, and Brian Andrew Ade, another man Dumpson said harassed her.
Dumpson’s lawyers previously asked a federal court in Washington to rule in her favor in the lawsuits against Anglin and Ade due to their failure to respond to them, according to NBC Washington.
Her lawsuit alleged that Anglin directed followers of The Daily Stormer to cyberbully her after Dumpson was the target of a May 2017 incident in which someone hung bananas from string tied in the shape of nooses across campus the day she began her term as president. No one has been found responsible for the crime, and University President Sylvia Burwell announced in May that “all credible leads have been exhausted” in the case.
The lawsuit alleged that Dumpson was the victim of “a vicious online campaign of racially motivated harassment designed to intimidate” her and place her in “fear for her safety.”
Days after the hate crime, McCarty tweeted a picture of bananas with the caption “READY THE TROOPS,” and tagged Dumpson in another tweet captioned “OOGA BOOGA,” according to the lawsuit. McCarty, who began directing tweets at Dumpson in May 2017, went by the Twitter name “Byron de la Vandal,” a likely reference to Klansman and white supremacist Byron de la Beckwith, who assassinated civil rights activist Medgar Evers in 1963.
In the court settlement, McCarty agreed to apologize directly to Dumpson in a video call that can be recorded and used for civil rights advocacy and educational purposes. He also agreed to complete 200 hours of community service to promote racial justice and civil rights and attend “anti-hate training” for at least one year.
Dumpson graduated from AU in May after resigning from the presidency in January. Her lawyer, Kristen Clarke, told the Associated Press that the settlement “should send a strong message to white supremacists and neo-Nazis all across the country that they will be held accountable for their conduct.”
