The DePaulia
Ella Lee, Print Managing Editor|January 26, 2021
A new lawsuit claiming racial and disability discrimination has been filed against the university by a professor within the College of Communication, marking the second lawsuit of that nature in the span of six months.
Dr. Sydney Dillard, a professor of public relations and advertising (PRAD), filed a complaint in late December alleging the university unlawfully discriminated against her on the basis of her race and disability. Dillard is the only Black woman within the College of Communication who is a tenure-track faculty member.
In the complaint, Dillard claims that she was subjected to a hostile work environment, singled out and subjected to “random, invasive office searches” and “belittled, ostracized and intimidated through microaggressions,” which negatively affected her ability to work.
When Nancy Foster, a nurse manager for one of Northwestern Memorial Hospital’s COVID-19 units, received the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on Dec. 18, a familiar face administered it.
That face belonged to Northwestern Memorial Hospital Education Coordinator Lizzy Murphy an emotional sight, Foster said, because they had been through the pandemic together since it began. Of the 40 different stations Foster estimated were set up, Murphy’s happened to be the available one.
“I literally cried. Somebody took a picture and I sent it to my family,” said Foster, who received her second dose on Jan. 8. “And I’m like, ‘This is one step closer.’ So it was very, very emotional.”
On Wednesday, University administrators announced guidelines around the modified quarantine period students are expected to follow upon their return to campus. The two-stage quarantine period, which applies to students living on and off campus, will last Jan. 3 to 17. In the first stage, students should remain in their residences until they receive two negative.