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Professor with hearing problems also reported to bias team by student
Someone complained that either a graduate student or a professor used biologically correct language when referring to women, according to a bias report obtained by The College Fix.
Among the more than 100 Bias Response and Referral Network reports filed between July 2024 and March 2026, were three that addressed the same controversy.
A graduate student reported someone for complaining about “having to change grant proposal language from ‘mothers’ to ‘lactating individuals,’” according to the October 2025 report. The spreadsheet only labels the alleged offender as a “respondent.”
The Fix obtained a spreadsheet of bias reports via a public records request. This one is one of the 15 percent that involve gender identity, sexual orientation, or gender expression.
Of the 117 bias reports, roughly 50 percent came from students at either the undergraduate or graduate level, while 29 percent of complaints came from staff, faculty, or professionals at the school. Nearly 20 percent of the bias reports came from sources with an unknown relationship to the school. Additionally, around 25 complaints specifically say the person reporting is “anonymous,” though none of the reports include the names of a specific person complaining.
About 1 in 4 complaints involve online communication or graffiti, while 10 percent concern students reporting professors.
One instance, in September 2024, involved a student reporting a faculty member for having a hearing disability. The student “reported that a faculty member’s difficulty hearing was impacting the classroom experience.”
Another report based on gender identity and religion was an Aug. 2025 incident where a student reported a street evangelist for saying “remember, only male and female,” and trying “to convert [the] reporter to Christianity” outside of the university’s Coffman Memorial Union.
Another report detailed how a student’s “rainbow safe space door mat” in a dorm room doorway had been “flipped over or kicked away.”
Meanwhile, 20 reports were classified as bias against national origin, and 40 reports were classified as bias against race.
At least four of the incidents classified as bias against national origin or race involved a student or university employee reporting an individual who did not have any relationship to the University of Minnesota.
One report was from an anonymous university employee who overheard “biased comments … being made by USPS worker toward a UMN custodial worker.”
One incident involved a student reporting “observing a Panda Express employee mistreating an international student because of limited English proficiency.”
The third incident was an “anonymous report about a dentist mistreating a patient of color,” from April 2025.
The fourth report was an online incident, classified as a bias report regarding race, where a “non-university community member expressed concern about a faculty member’s research.”
One bias report involving race included an anonymous student reporting their fellow student for discriminatory language used at a party a year prior. In this bias report, from Oct. 2024, the “anonymous student reported that another student repeatedly used racially discriminatory language targeting the Asian/Chinese community at a party in Oct. 2023.”
In one report, classified as race-based bias, a reporter “expressed having experienced racial bias, but provided no information about what happened or why they believed the concern was race-based.”
Another anonymous race-related report involved an “unnamed student” who “reported microaggression against them and their Muslim friends,” when a dining employee “hesitated to scan them in while not hesitating to scan in a white student,” and then refused the “student’s re-entry into dining hall after retrieving item from lobby.”
The College Fix sent emails to the University of Minnesota public relations team on May 12, and to the senior director of public relations on May 14, and the diversity and equity office at the University of Minnesota on May 14. The Fix also left a voicemail with the public relations department on May 15.
The Fix asked whether the breakdown of complaints was typical for the University of Minnesota, and how many of the bias reports the university actually investigated.
Students should talk to one another, not rat each other out, expert says
These bias reporting systems can create free speech concerns, according to a fellow with the American Council of Trustees and Alumni.
Steve McGuire said the systems can chill free speech “especially when what is reported is mere speech and not conduct.”
Many of the cases reported with the University of Minnesota, McGuire said, “seem to involve reporting people for what would likely be constitutionally protected speech and nothing else.”
“While students must have ways to report harassment and discrimination,” McGuire said, “Several of the reported incidents in the list appear to concern issues about which there is legitimate disagreement, but one side made a bias report instead of engaging in dialogue and debate.”
He called it “troubling” that the university does not protect free speech but instead encouraging complaining.
“Allowing bias reporting encourages an illiberal mentality that runs counter to the purpose of a university,” McGuire said.
He said universities should encourage people to talk to each other instead of reporting on one another.
“It is troubling that universities allow anonymous reporting and collect data on reports that cannot be investigated,” McGuire said, regarding the 24% of bias reports filed by anonymous sources. “Bureaucrats (and perhaps also activist faculty and students) can use the unverified reports to make claims about the campus community that might not be true.”
“Based on these claims, they can then make demands for policies, offices, programs, etc. that serve their agenda but might not be needed and could have a negative impact on campus life,” McGuire said.
MORE: ‘Drinko de Mayo’ UMinn frat party subject of bias complaint
