Four Champlain College students are facing discipline — up to suspension or expulsion — for a demonstration they held earlier this month against a faculty member who has posted online about “the evil of transgender ideology.”
The students are accused of disrupting an April 18 “Admitted Student Day” by handing out flyers about adjunct psychology professor David Tomasi on campus and, in at least one case, entering a classroom during a gathering of prospective students and their families. Some of Tomasi’s LinkedIn and YouTube posts reference “the genocidal and racist nature of ideologies such as transgenderism” and criticize children’s literature featuring transgender characters. The flyers students handed out included screenshots of Tomasi’s posts alongside text that called for his firing and asked, “Is Champlain College Safe for Trans People?”
The students’ actions, a Champlain administrator wrote in two letters reviewed by Seven Days, represented a violation of the college’s code of conduct and “Safe Campus Demonstrations” policy, which was drafted in 2024. That policy, which governs all on-campus protests, demonstrations and vigils, calls for students to obtain approval from the director of campus public safety at least 48 hours before the intended event. It authorizes three outdoor locations where students can hold demonstrations and limits them to “business hours” — between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. The policy also states that “demonstrations cannot disrupt routine, orderly or normal college operations.”
On Monday, a student-led group called Trans+ held another protest, this one at the intersection of Main and South Willard streets in Burlington, in support of their peers facing discipline from the college. All four had their disciplinary hearings with administrators that day.
One was Aminah Carrington, a senior who handed out flyers at the demonstration against Tomasi. She said the policy about demonstrations is “overly restrictive” and essentially means that students cannot protest on campus.
The policy gives Champlain administrators “complete control,” Carrington said. “I think a lot of people in this country know that a protest is meant to be disruptive. That’s how you know it’s effective.”
In an emailed statement to Seven Days, the president’s chief of staff Leandre Waldo wrote that Champlain “fully supports freedom of expression and the free exchange of diverse ideas, beliefs and opinions.”
“The College’s policies provide students with clear avenues to participate in expressive activity in ways that do not disrupt the rights of others to visit, study, teach, work, and live on our campus,” the statement said.
Waldo wrote that “the students facing disciplinary action were protesting on campus in areas that fall outside those outlined in the safe demonstration policy, specifically, inside an academic building and classrooms where presentations were being hosted.”
Though Carrington was one of four students facing punishment for the April 18 event, she was the only one whose letter from Champlain stated that she might be “suspended or dismissed” from the college.
Carrington told Seven Days that during the hearing, which lasted more than an hour, administrators told her that she was facing more severe punishment than the other students because she used a “sound-amplification device” and entered a classroom where prospective students and their parents were gathered. Carrington acknowledged picking up a bullhorn for “two seconds” but said she put it down when she realized how loud it was.
Carrington, a Black queer woman who runs the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine group, said she was told that a decision regarding her punishment could come as soon as Wednesday. She said it was “devastating” to consider the prospect of not being able to graduate or losing out on job prospects after spending years working toward her degree.
From left: Aminah Carrington, Simone Lerner and Danella Hohmann at Monday’s protest Credit: Alison Novak
Simone Lerner, a senior who also had a disciplinary hearing, spoke to the crowd of protesters afterward. She told them that she had enrolled in Tomasi’s behavioral neuroscience class for the spring semester, then learned about his online postings. She decided to withdraw from the class because she had enough credits to graduate, but some students did not have that option because they needed the course to apply to graduate-school programs, she said.
“The bottom line is, students should never be forced into deciding between their education and future career endeavors and their values and safety,” Lerner told the crowd.
In an interview on Monday, Lerner said she didn’t feel like the actions she took part in on April 18 — which she described as “walking around on a campus that we’re the attendees of … peacefully handing out pamphlets” — constituted a “protest.” She said she believed the college’s disciplinary actions against students felt “indicative of a deeper rooted issue of silencing student voices.”
Danella Hohmann, a Champlain junior who attended Monday’s protest, agrees. Hohmann was among the students who handed out flyers on April 18 but was not subject to disciplinary action because she remained off campus. She was, however, disciplined by the administration earlier in April for allegedly hanging a sign on campus that said “Champlain College hires transphobes to teach your children.” As a result, she said, she was barred from campus for several weekends, which interfered with dance-team practice and her on-campus job at a help desk.
Hohmann was spurred to speak out against Tomasi after taking a Positive Psychology class with him during the fall semester. For a homework assignment, Hohmann said, Tomasi had students watch and respond to videos of researchers debunking the gender spectrum, saying transgender and nonbinary people were not real, and calling diversity, equity and inclusion a racist construct. She later found Tomasi’s online posts, which she said made her believe that he was a “transphobe.”
Hohmann met multiple times with administrators about Tomasi’s conduct and writings, calling for his firing. Hohmann said she was told by administrators that they did not look at his social media posts before hiring him and were conducting a human resources investigation into the professor. Hohmann said she was disturbed to see him teaching again when the spring semester started. Waldo, the Champlain chief of staff, declined to comment on personnel issues. Tomasi referred questions about his interactions with administrators to the college.
In an interview on Tuesday, Tomasi said he was “puzzled” by students’ negative feelings. He always “went above and beyond to make sure everyone felt respected” in class, he said, and never tried to stifle viewpoints. He said he knew little about the student protests against him but said that it made him feel “uncomfortable and unsafe” that students were speaking forcefully against him and calling for his firing, noting that he is an immigrant from the Austrian region of Tyrol.
Tomasi said he feels bad if students were hurt by his online posts, but he believes he is misunderstood and “does not harbor … hateful views.” His posts, he said, can only be truly understood “with a more profound knowledge of the clinical studies and research” that informs them.
In regard to referring to transgender ideology as evil, Tomasi said that “saying an ideology is evil does not mean the people embracing such ideology are evil.”
For Hohmann, what started as a mission to oust one professor has morphed into a broader critique of the college and its lack of transparency.
“Over these many months I’ve been advocating and asking for this institution to change, I realized that this is about taking a critical look at the policies they have surrounding hiring, surrounding demonstration, surrounding supporting students,” she said.
Carrington also highlighted bigger issues at play.
‘”We’re in a very precarious time right now and trans and immigrant and Black and brown people are under attack in this country,” Carrington said. “It’s imperative that Champlain College protects its trans students and makes it a safe place for them.”
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