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Kennesaw State Student Accused of Harassment for Waiting on Meeting With Advisor

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Kennesaw State University (KSU) in Georgia acknowledged it received and is looking into a complaint from a student who was accused of harassment for waiting on an academic advisor to meet with him.

A student named Kevin Bruce posted a video to Twitter Wednesday night with the message: "Rude advisors at Kennesaw. [Shaking my head]." In the video, an advisor Bruce identified as Abby Dawson approaches him and tells him he is harassing her and her assistant and leaves to call campus security.

Bruce later shared screen shots of emails dated in Aug. 2014 in which he was corresponding with Dawson about course requirements in the exercise science department. Bruce also posted screen shots of emails dated recently explaining the trouble he has experienced with Dawson to an unknown recipient.

In those emails Bruce says Dawson displayed a pattern of cancelling scheduled meetings, while also indicating he prefers in-person dialogue to email correspondence. Bruce also said he spoke to the department head, JC Bradbury, about all the cancelled meetings and what he thought was insufficient counseling.

Bruce's video has thousands of retweets, favorites and replies and at one point on Thursday, #ItsBiggerThanKSU was trending on Twitter in the U.S. KSU confirmed they were aware of the video and had started "a formal complaint process."

Tammy DeMel, KSU's director of strategic communications, told the Chronicle of Higher Education the school is currently "just trying to put the rest of the context around [the video]."

While some Twitter users suggested Dawson, a white woman, felt threatened by Bruce, a black male, most of the online discourse has focused on the unfairness of paying thousands of dollars for an education and receiving "subpar" guidance and "disrespect."

One user in particular said she too has experienced similar problems in the same department.

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