Missouri
Missouri State president responds to federal lawsuit over ‘vulgar’ incident at Utah Tech
The new president of Missouri State University was accused in a federal lawsuit filed Thursday of arranging vegetables in the shape of a penis and testicles on the front porch of a cabinet-level coworker during his time as president of Utah Tech University.
As part of the apparent practical joke, Williams left a note referring to the display of two eggplant and one zucchini − referred to as a “zuweenie” − but signed with the name of three of university colleagues, rather than his own.
Th falsely named colleagues — Rebecca Broadbent, Jared Rasband and Hazel Sainsbury — filed the lawsuit Thursday against former president Richard “Biff” Williams along with Utah Tech, members of Williams’ former leadership team, as well as higher education officials and institutions in Utah.
At the time of the November 2023 incident, Broadbent was general counsel, Rasband was senior associate general counsel, and Sainsbury was director of equity compliance and Title IX coordinator. Broadbent, who reportedly directly to Williams, and Rasband were also involved in enforcing nondiscrimination and harassment laws at Utah Tech.
They alleged in the suit that the incident was part of a toxic, hostile and “poison well” work environment.
Williams was president of Utah Tech from mid-2014 through January 2024. He resigned less than two months after the vegetable incident, saying he wanted to pursue career advancement elsewhere.
In an email Saturday, Williams provided a response to the lawsuit and media coverage of the incident toward the end of his presidency at Utah Tech.
“While I was there, I initiated what I intended to be a humorous gesture toward a member of our staff,” he wrote.
“I have since come to realize that the prank was not appropriate. This was a mistake. I regret my lapse in judgment and I accept this as a learning moment.”
He added: “This incident is now included in a lawsuit that was shared with the media. I apologize for the undue attention this has brought to the university.”
Williams said his statement was prompted by recent media coverage. A lengthy story was published Friday by the Salt Lake Tribune.
“This experience continues to remind me how important it is to always strive to foster a campus environment that is safe and welcoming to all students, faculty and staff,” he wrote.
The MSU Board of Governors issued a statement Saturday that they were aware of the lawsuit. The board said it “continues to have confidence in President Williams’ ability to lead Missouri State University. We are committed to working alongside him to ensure that the university is a safe and welcoming environment to all students, faculty and staff.
The News-Leader asked the university if the board was aware of the incident and subsequent investigation as part of the hiring process.
Williams was one of three publicly named finalists for the job and emerged as the unanimous choice to serve as the 12th president and succeed the institution’s longtime leader, Clif Smart.
Missouri State has not provided an answer and said Williams will not be available for an interview.
They allege the following in a 42-page lawsuit:
- Utah Tech openly flouted the protections of Title IX and plaintiffs faced resistance, intimidation, harassment and retaliation from the university’s top leaders as they worked to establish an environment free or harassment and discrimination;
- Then-president Williams was involved in the practical joke, which they described as sexual and obscene, at the home of a university vice president;
- A “sham” investigation was completed, as part of a cover-up, by the university’s governing bodies, the Utah System of Higher Education, the Utah Board of Higher Education; and the Office of the Commissioner of Higher Education;
- The incident and subsequent investigation undermined the plaintiffs and the work they were doing in Title IX and equity compliance.
The lawsuit alleged that on Nov. 8., 2023, Williams left a display of vegetables shaped as male genitalia — including a long zucchini referred to as a “zuweenie — on the front porch of a university vice president who was recovering from a vasectomy that day.
In a printed note left with the display, was attributed to Broadbent, Rasband and Sainsbury — two of the names were misspelled — without their knowledge or consent.
Williams, who did not broadly acknowledge that he left the display in the days following the surgery, reportedly told his chief of staff about the gift before he dropped it off, adding he thought it would trigger a laugh.
The university vice president did not immediately know who left the display and messaged colleagues at Utah Tech with a photo of the display along with RING doorbell footage showing a man − later identified as Williams − with a hoodie cinched up to disguise his face making the delivery.
According to the suit, the image and the note falsely signed by the three university officials was widely shared among top officials and others.
The day after the display was left, Williams allegedly showed the images of the display and note to his chief of staff and admitted he left the vegetables. However, the chief of staff did not report the incident to the expected channels on campus.
The suit argued Williams and others should have recognized the gravity of falsely signing the names of other university officials, including two female administrators with responsibilities for ensuring Title IX compliance.
In the suit, plaintiffs alleged the “zuweenie” incident was part of a pattern.
They allege that for at least four years, there were posts to a quote board in a public break room on campus that containing obscene and vulgar sexual comments with names attributed.
The plaintiffs said concerns raised about this quote wall was minimized by Williams and others, creating a hostile work environment.
Sainsbury, who is Black, said the university sought to leverage her race to enhance its image in marketing videos and in meetings with athletes, freshmen and their families. She served as a central figure in a rebranding effort for the university in 2022, when it changed its name from Dixie State University.
She alleged in the suit that despite using her voice and image in the videos distributed nationally, she faced a pattern of marginalization and her input was either not sought or wanted in key matters pertaining to her role.
The plaintiffs said they experienced verbal threats, physical intimidation and harassment from university officials, which made it harder to ensure Utah Tech employees and students complied with nondiscrimination and harassment laws and policies.
Sainsbury said her work was undermined in other ways. For example, deans were involved in a “Title IX mocking party,” where she was given gag gifts including the “Title IX for Dummies” book.
In the suit, Sainsbury said the university failed to protect or support her when a high-ranking official was upset with the outcome of his case.
(This story was updated to include new information).
Increased fertilizer prices have farmers concerned
Let’s look at how economic and farming experts see this playing out in the coming months, and what that means for all of us.
While industries across the U.S. are experiencing shortages as a result of the war in Iran, it appears Missouri farmers could come out without much impact — this year, at least.
The conflict has seen closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway for one-fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas. All the shipping disruption has increased the price of fuel, vital to the production of fertilizer, and has limited the export of nitrogen-based fertilizers manufactured in the Persian Gulf.
Ultimately, experts say, it could disrupt the supply chain for months to come and further drive up grocery prices. The World Bank has even warned that the conflict could threaten food security worldwide.
Most Missouri row crop producers — whose fields yield corn, soybeans, cotton, rice and peanuts — had secured the majority of the fertilizer they needed for the year before the conflict began, said Ben Brown, University of Missouri Extension’s state crop row economist.
“There’s probably about 15% of our fertilizer needs still left from the row crop space that would have been used in-season,” Brown said. “The majority of it was already here and already paid for. For this growing season, there’s not as much of a concern about fertilizer as it would be next year.”
Dr. Joana Colussi, research assistant professor in Purdue University’s Department of Agricultural Economics, points to a late March survey of nearly 1,000 corn growers conducted by the National Corn Growers Association. Eight out of 10 corn growers said their 2026 corn acreage plans have not been impacted by the Middle East conflict, which has seen fertilizer prices spike as high as 45%.
In April, an American Farm Bureau Federation Fertilizer Availability Survey of more than 5,700 farmers and ranchers across the country plainly stated that “rising input costs tied to the conflict in the Middle East are adding strain to an already challenging farm economy.”
But the survey also found pronounced variance in fertilizer pre-booking rates by region. Fully 67% of Midwestern commodity farmers typically relying on soybean and corn — the nation’s two largest crops — reported having made fertilizer purchases ahead of the planting season that is now at its peak.
It’s a number more than twice as high as any other region.
“Given these crop rotations, pre-booking is more common in the Midwest, where fertilizer needs are typically larger and purchasing decisions are often made well ahead of planting,” the American Farm Bureau Federation stated. “As a result, a larger share of Midwestern farmers reported being able to secure the inputs they need before recent price increases.”
Looking ahead to this fall
None of this means the Midwestern farm economy is barreling onward and upward, impervious to the effects of the Iranian conflict.
Timing is everything in agriculture. The conflict in Iran broke out when farmers were on the precipice of their spring plant of corn and soybeans, typically used for livestock feed, food and biofuels. Fertilizers are applied just before or at planting time.
Most Midwestern farmers may have pre-purchased their fertilizers for this crop season — but farmers must plant with one eye fixed firmly on the future, said Brady Holst, vice chairman of the Illinois Soybean Association.
“Around 20% (of Midwest farmers) that put nitrogen (fertilizer) on (their farmland) in the spring or in (planting) season would be hit hard by higher prices because they are buying now or in the next month or two,” said Holst, who farms soybeans, corn and wheat on 3,600 acres in West Central Illinois.
“It has all farmers worried because usually they will buy fertilizer for this coming fall ahead of time. And fertilizer prices move slowly around the world, so it takes a long time for fertilizer prices to move down. So even if the (Iranian) conflict ended today, the price for fall fertilizer would still be elevated.”
Veronica Nigh, senior economist at The Fertilizer Institute, points out that the United States produces about 60% of its own total needs for the phosphate fertilizer used extensively in corn and soybean production.
The U.S. still imports a significant portion from Saudi Arabia, Nigh said during an April 23 seminar of the International Food Policy Research Institute and the Agricultural Market Information System.
“We have significant exposure from the Middle East,” she said. “From a timing perspective, however, those phosphate imports tend to come in earlier in the year, so much of that product was already in place prior to the Strait (of Hormuz) closure.”
But Nigh said one of the Fertilizer Institute’s members had reminded her that “we’re an industry that builds product for four months and then applies it for two.”
“So we’re now certainly getting into the time of the year where we’re looking and thinking and worrying about building those supplies for the fall application,” she said.
‘The whole world revolves around diesel fuel’
The war in Iran, in addition to issues with U.S. oil refineries, has led to record prices.
“Diesel fuel here in the U.S. is actually more expensive than it was in the run-up to the COVID-19 outbreak and the conflict that we saw in Russia and Ukraine. That’s how high diesel prices have gotten here lately,” Brown said. “It’s a combination of the Middle East plus some refinery issues in the U.S.”
Part of this is due to the fact that most of the oil produced in the U.S. is used for gasoline production, while heavy crude oil, which is used to produce diesel for tractors and trucks, is imported. This could lead to higher prices at the grocery store, Brown said.
“Any time we see higher oil prices, it increases the cost from farm gate to retail,” Brown said. “So much of the food dollar now comes from that part of the equation, that the real impact to producers is going to be the higher diesel fuel cost on all of this (and) the lack of production of agriculture commodities.”
Dairy farmer Jim Good, farm manager of Michigan State University’s Dairy Cattle Teaching & Research Center, pointed to a surge in diesel prices that, Good says, is putting the hurt on him.
Everything burns diesel fuel on a dairy farm — everything from tractors to semi-trucks, Good said.
“Everything is freighted in and freighted out (by semi trucks) on the dairy farm,” he said. “We’ve got feed coming in. We’ve got milk going out. The whole world revolves around diesel fuel, so when it goes from $3 a gallon to $6 a gallon, it gets to be pretty pricey.
“Some of our products — if you’re not raising your own grain products, those all have to be trucked in. We don’t have processing on site, so we’ve got to haul that milk out.”
The Iran war’s disruption of global energy production has led to steeper petrol, diesel and jet fuel prices. Diesel, which was averaging more than $5.70 a gallon in Michigan and Indiana as of May 1, according to AAA, remained above $4.40 on average following Memorial Day weekend. If the higher energy prices continue, that will also put pressure on Missouri producers.
“We are starting to see higher energy prices feed into the inflationary pressures,” Brown said. “Part of the expectation would be that if this continues, we’d see higher interest expenses for producers later in the year.”
During an April 13 visit to Michigan State University’s Dairy Cattle Teaching and Research Center, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins brought some help for Michigan’s specialty crop sectors — an increase from $165 million to $275 million in Specialty Crop grants.
Taking the long view
If the war with Iran continues, there will likely be impacts on Missouri producers next season, Brown said. Higher fertilizer prices would result in producers having to make changes to their crops.
“We’ll probably see a bit of higher fertilizer prices if (the war is) still around,” Brown said, which will likely result in farmers shifting “to the less fertilizer-dependent crops; reducing fertilizer, which potentially has an impact on yield — those would be things we expect for next year.”
The Illinois Soybean Association’s Holst finds hope in a push within Congress to let gas stations sell E-15 — gasoline blended with 15% ethanol — nationwide and year-round to ease fuel costs without forcing stations to overhaul their equipment. The U.S. House passed the legislation May 13 but it faces an uncertain future in the Senate.
The Environmental Protection Agency has issued temporary emergency fuel waivers to allow nationwide sales of E-15 in past years, but Holst said he and other farmers want it to be permanent.
“They were worried about that becoming a smog problem, but there’s been lots of queries and studies with more modern vehicles and how the gasoline system is now,” he said. “There’s not really a concern for that, so it’s just kind of the slow grinding cogs of the government. Technology’s advanced a lot faster than we can advance the legislation that’s out there.”
If fertilizer prices don’t come down for farmers by the middle of summer or this fall, Holst said, there will be noticeable “acreage shifts” — a move away from planting corn to planting soybeans, which require less nitrogen fertilizer, meaning lower production costs.
That would be felt in Illinois, the nation’s largest soybean producing state and second-largest corn producing state.
In a recent survey of 4,000 farmers across 26 states, Chicago-based Farmer’s Keeper LLC found considerable sentiment for such a shift.
“Since March 1, 21% of farmers said they plan to decrease their corn acres,” Farmer’s Keeper CEO Nick Tsiolis said in a recent episode of Ag Marketing IQ in Depth.
The Farmer’s Keeper survey tracks with findings from a recent Farm Futures Q1 survey, which showed 43% of farmers planning to grow less corn. But it also clashes with a March 31 USDA Prospective Plantings report that predicted only a 3.4% decrease from last year’s corn plantings.
Tsiolis told Ag Marketing IQ in Depth that farmers must make future cropping decisions with great care.
“Soybeans could fall out of bed really quickly if oil prices drop and diesel costs come down,” he said.
“Farming is a long-term game,” Tsiolis said. “Profitability comes from balancing agronomic and budgeting decisions, not making drastic swings year to year.”
Looking ahead, Purdue’s Colussi and Langemeier say the U.S. and Brazil — the world’s largest soybean producer and exporter — must better protect themselves in the future from “external shocks” like the conflict in Iran. They called on the two nations to more aggressively expand their fertilizer production.
“This is a long-term challenge, but it is becoming increasingly necessary for both countries to remain competitive in the global grain market,” they wrote. “Greater supply security would reduce vulnerability to geopolitical disruptions and provide more stability in input costs for producers.”
News-Leader reporter Susan Szuch contributed to this story.
The Missouri State University Foundation announced May 27 more new private gifts for the Clifton M. Smart III University Advancement Center, including a custom “Mo State” Steinway player piano.
During Wednesday’s event, the foundation also announced that it is 100 days away from opening its doors.
While Missouri State University Foundation president and CEO Brent Dunn was supposed to speak at the event, a family emergency meant he was unavailable, and MSU President Richard “Biff” Williams took his place.
“This center will be far more than a building,” Williams said. “It will be a welcome front door for our alumni, for our donors and for our friends. It will be a place where relationships are strengthened, Missouri pride is celebrated and the future of our university continues to grow not only through philanthropy but also through engagement.”
The new gifts include:
- The Garnett Family Bears Den, previously referred to as Living Room, from Mark Garnett (1978), Diann Garnett (1996), Kimberly Garnett Foht (1998) and Stephanie Garnett Smith (2004 and 2006);
- A Mo State Custom Steinway Spirio Piano from Gordon Kinne (1975) and Laura Kinne (1979);
- The Bart Bailey and Amelia Bailey Counts Executive Breakout Room from Bart Bailey and Amelia Bailey Counts (1994);
- An advancement office from Clarence E. McElroy (1963);
- Mary Asher Tearney BearMobile from Mary Asher Tearney (1954);
- And the Stan and Ethel Curbow BearMobile from Stan Curbow (1959) and Ethel Curbow (1960).
Between the proceeds from the 2024 sale of the Kenneth E. Meyer Alumni Center and additional foundation contributions, $20 million of the $26 million project is the result of private support.
The alumni center was announced in April 2024 and is named after former President Clif Smart as the result of a gift from an anonymous donor that was more than $1 million.
At the time, Dunn said the donor wanted to “recognize the contributions Clif has made over his tenure at the university.”
-
New Mexico5 seconds agoVirgin Galactic partners with nonprofit for menstruation research in space
-
North Carolina8 minutes agoFamilies in Durham say they’re barely getting by; New report says Americans are saving less
-
North Dakota14 minutes agoPublic asked to weigh in on technology use in North Dakota schools
-
Ohio20 minutes agoI-TEAM: FBI searches multiple Stansley Mining properties in NW Ohio
-
Oklahoma26 minutes agoPresident Donald Trump endorses an Oklahoma gubernatorial candidate
-
Oregon32 minutes agoOregon childhood vaccination rates fall to record low as exemptions reach new high
-
Pennsylvania38 minutes agoLawsuit filed over
-
Rhode Island44 minutes agoHealth professionals warn Rhode Islanders to watch out for Lone star ticks
