Ex-TSU Employee Claims Firing Was Retaliatory

December 4, 2024

On Aug. 27, Tanaka Vercher claims she refused to bend the rules in service of the university. The next day, she says, Tennessee State University fired her.

Tanaka Vercher, the former director of financial aid for Tennessee State University, filed a suit against the university in Davidson County Chancery Court on Dec 2, claiming she was fired after she refused to violate federal law on behalf of the university.

According to WSMV, Vercher, who worked at Tennessee State for 21 years, was fired in August along with 114 colleagues to help the HBCU navigate its financial issues.

Her lawsuit, however, tells a much different story.

The litigation details a meeting on August 27 between Vercher, then-TSU Chief of Staff Curtis Johnson, Barbara Tharpe (who is now in Vercher’s former role) consultant Beau Briggs, and other administrators, including members of the TSU president’s office.

According to the lawsuit, “During this meeting, Ms. Vercher estimated that more than twenty percent of TSU students had been admitted without proof of a high school diploma or its equivalent. Her refusal to request funds for these students meant a loss of approximately $7,000,000 in available cash to TSU. Mr. Briggs repeated that TSU could not wait until the reconciliation process was complete in October for distribution of these funds.”

A day after Vercher refused to bend the rules in service of the university, she received an email informing her that she would no longer be employed by the university.

According to the lawsuit, this ran counter to her last available performance review.

“She had previously received highly favorable performance reviews and had just been given a raise in July, one month earlier,” the suit explained. “No reasonable explanation exists for Ms. Vercher’s termination. The only explanation is that TSU was retaliating against her for her refusal to request government funds for TSU, to which she knew TSU was not entitled. The action that TSU was requesting Ms. Vercher take was illegal and a violation of important public policy.”

As The Nashville Banner reported, Vercher is seeking back pay, front pay, and damages.

The lawsuit against the university follows a rash of problems for the HBCU; in November, the school board voted unanimously to fire the top lawyer at the university and to stop paying its former president, Glenda Glover, who was set to receive $1.7 million over the next four years.

Also, in November, university officials alluded that part of the reason for the cessation of the payments to Glover was the issuance of scholarships that the university didn’t have the financial standing to honor.

In addition, Tennessee State Comptroller of Treasury Jason Mumpower criticized the actions of the university’s previous board of trustees, which “operated this university in such a way as literally, you are out of money. They are gone, and they’ve left the situation where literally you were going to fail to make payroll on November 29 if you had not had an infusion of cash from the state, which we, fortunately, have been able to do.”

Compounding the issues faced by Tennessee State University is a 2023 report from the Biden administration detailing that the university, like other HBCUs in similar situations, was underfunded by the State of Tennessee by as much as $2.1 billion.

Per the United States Department of Agriculture’s press release, “Unequitable appropriated funding of the 1890 institutions in the states ranges from $172 million to $2.1 billion, causing severe financial gaps. In the last 30 years alone, these funds could have supported vital and much-needed infrastructure and student services and would have better positioned the recipient universities to compete for grants to increase educational opportunity for students.”

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