EDITOR’S NOTE: In the print edition of this article, the two students who filed reports about Jeromy Hunt were assigned random names, Elizabeth and Caroline, to protect their identities. After publication, both students decided they wanted their names to be used. The article has been edited to reflect their wishes.

On April 23, the article was edited to reiterate that in his comments, Title IX Coordinator Adam Rose was not speaking about these two incidents or any student involved.

Two students said a senior student mentor in multiple clubs initiated nonconsensual sexual contact with them this academic year.

The two students reported similar incidents about public relations student Jeromy Hunt to UCAPD.

According to Hunt’s resume, he is the president of the UCA Gospel Choir, the vice president of the Students for the Propagation of Black Culture club and a program coordinator for the Black/Brown Male Achievement Challenge program.

He also lists that he’s a UCA Ambassador and a mentor with the Minority Mentorship Program and Project X.

Hunt received the 2022-23 Newman Civic Fellow award and was recognized at a May 2022 UCA Board of Trustees meeting as a recipient of a Bear CLAWS award.

Currently, Hunt is a social media intern with UCA Dining.

Hunt did not deny to UCAPD or The Echo that both incidents occurred. He said he received no disciplinary action from the university.

He said he met with Title IX Coordinator Adam Rose about the reports and he was not asked to meet with Dean of Students Kelly Owens.

“We just talked about, basically, he [Rose] told me that in this situation, I did as I was supposed to do. They expressed their discomfort, and I left. And just to be more aware of certain situations surrounding stuff like that. There wasn’t any disciplinary things in regards to me. The only thing that I was informed was to cease contact with those two women,” Hunt said.

Both students said they had never spoken to one another.

GYDANCE STEWART

Gydance Stewart, a freshman, made a police report about Hunt on Aug. 27.

She said she met Hunt through a friend during Welcome Week in August.

“My friend was like, ‘If you need anything, contact him,’” she said. “No matter where I went, he was there. Because there’s so many events that were going on during campus that week. He was just there,” she said.

Stewart said she started getting involved in the Minority Mentorship Program, where Hunt won an “Outstanding Mentor” award in 2022, according to his resume.

“That’s how I really started associating myself around him and being around him more because he was always there,” Stewart said.

She said she talked to people at an MMP event about her interest in Greek life, and someone suggested she talk to Hunt.

“Even though he’s not in it, he’s around them every single day because he does stuff with them,” she said. 

Stewart said after she texted him, “He was like, ‘I could come by later on, come by your room. We could talk about it,’” she said. “In the messages, clearly, nowhere near did I say ‘I want to do stuff with you.’ Nothing at all. I just want to simply talk about Greek life and stress in college.”

Stewart said he came over, and she said she expected him to sit at her desk chair to have “a normal conversation,” but he “sat himself against me on this small couch.

“I’m a small girl, so I’m on the edge of my couch,” she said. “He was like, ‘So, what are you trying to talk about?’ and stuff, so he just started rubbing me.

“He started rubbing on my legs, my back, my stomach. Rubbing on top of my breasts,” she said. “I’m trying to scoot over, but I really can’t because there’s no room, so I put myself in a fetal position. I was just there.

“I didn’t really understand what was going on in that moment because I was just so shocked myself. Then, he got up; he turned the lights off, took my Apple Watch off, my glasses off. He was like, ‘Can I take your shirt off?’”

Stewart said when she told him no, he asked, “Are you sure?”

“He started rubbing under my bra,” she said. “I’m just moving away because I’m like, ‘I don’t know what your intentions are. I don’t know what you’re trying to do.’

“He kept grabbing me closer and closer, and I’m trying to pull away from him, and he’s not letting me go at all. So I was like, ‘OK. I ain’t got no choice, but I’m just gonna sit right here, just gonna say nothing.”

“So then he told me to roll over onto my stomach. He got on my back. He was like, ‘Can I take your shirt off?’ I said, ‘No, can you please get up off me?’ He said, ‘Are you sure?’ I said ‘yes,’” she said.

“He still kept touching on me,” she said. “I’m like, ‘I’m fine.’ I turned the lights on.”

“I went out in the hallway to wait for him to come out of my room, and he was waiting there for a sec. He was like, ‘You need to put them legs up.’ I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’ He was like, ‘You got some pretty legs; you don’t need to be wearing shorts like that.’”

Stewart said Hunt walked out of her dorm “like nothing happened,” and then she told a friend.

“I was crying and everything. I was so upset. I was mainly upset with myself because I let this man come into my dorm, into my personal space, and you invaded my privacy by doing this.

“You don’t touch on somebody without their permission. That’s just pure wrong,” she said.

She said she told her friend, who was “so mad and upset, and he called Jeromy.”

“Jeromy was like, ‘I don’t know what I did.’ So he texted me after, and was like, ‘If I made you uncomfortable, I do apologize. That wasn’t my intention.’”

“I didn’t respond. I blocked him. I screenshotted the messages,” she said. 

“After it happened, I did the report, sent the messages into the police, and after all of that, he just looks at me every time he sees me. Just a stare. And it’s a long stare,” she said.

“I keep my head down because I don’t want to see you or anything,” she said.

KENDALL MURFF

Another UCAPD report about Hunt was filed March 31 by Kendall Murff, a sophomore.

“I was terrified because of how it continuously progressed because I told him that I was uncomfortable with him doing a small thing and then it became a bigger thing and it just kept going,” she said. “I was nervous. I was scared he was gonna hurt me.” 

Murff said she met Hunt while working at an event on campus.

“He started talking to me, introducing himself and saying his name. He asked me where I was from and everything. He said he wanted to expose me to more people that look like me.”

She said Hunt invited her to hang out with him and a group of friends for Easter, which was March 31.

Murff said she got into an argument over the phone with her mom that had upset her, so she decided to cancel. 

Murff said Hunt offered to come to her dorm to comfort her.

“I just wanted to stay home and be by myself for a few days. So, he asked me and when I told him the reason for my declining, he asked if I wanted someone to talk to and I said yes,” Murff said.

She said she thought they were just going to talk over the phone, but Hunt invited himself to her dorm.

“If it was any other day, I would have said no, but my roommate wasn’t here, so I guess I wanted a friend to talk to about it,” she said.

Murff described the interaction in detail in her written statement for the UCAPD report.

She said Hunt unzipped her jacket and started to massage her back with one hand while “caressing” her thigh with the other.

Murff said Hunt asked her if she was uncomfortable, and when she said yes, he said: “I’m going to turn the lights out.”

According to the report, “He then asked to get into her bed and she said yes. In her bed, Hunt moved [Murff] into a laying position and began to ‘cuddle’ her. She reported that he stuck his hand, slightly, up her shorts, grabbed and rested his hand on her upper thigh/lower buttocks. [Murff] reported that she was afraid he was going to go further and do something to her or hurt her if she told him ‘no’ too meanly.”

In her written statement, Murff said, “A couple minutes go by and I’m trying to figure out how to get out of this.”

Murff said she asked Hunt to leave, and he did. 

EFFECTS

Murff said she was unaware of the previous report against Hunt until The Echo reached out to her.

“I’m so affected by what he did to me, but the fact that it happened to someone else affects me even more,” she said. “I just don’t want him to do it to anybody else.”

Murff said she plans to press charges against Hunt.

“I wasn’t going to move forward because at the time, I thought it just happened to me, but now that I know it happened to another girl, it really angered me and upset me,” she said. “It made me feel guilty knowing that he’s done this to people and that I didn’t do anything about it. I want to do something about it.”

Stewart said, “It runs through my mind every day. There’s no doubt about that. 

“Therapy is different for everybody. It did not help me,” she said.

“I really managed to cope on my own, but I also had the support of my friends to help me along the way,” she said. “I know a lot of other people’s stories, and I can relate to those.”

Stewart said she just told herself to move forward.

“I do have very bad depression, and if I would have thought about that every single day while I’m moving, it would not have been good,” she said.

“I just tried to keep myself busy with schoolwork and college,” she said.

Officer Nicholas Tufu wrote in the report that whenever Stewart started explaining what happened for the report, “she almost immediately started to cry.”

Stewart said, “When everything was happening, I was so upset. I blamed myself for it happening because the only thing I could think in my mind was, ‘I let you come up here in my room.’”

She said when she told her family about it, they said, “You should not let people in your dorm.”

“Them telling me that, it took a toll on me because I was like, OK, I understand I shouldn’t be letting people in and out of my dorm, but that’s really the only place I feel safer to talk to people in, instead of a public area.”

Stewart said, “When I did the report and stuff, they [UCAPD] were saying they were gonna tell him, ‘You can’t be near her at a certain point.’ But at the [MMP] events, he was still taking pictures of me and posting them on his page, which I did not get after all this stuff had happened.

“There were other people you could have taken pictures of, but you want to take pictures of me,” she said.

“The detective told me I could let it go forward, or I can let the dean [Dean of Students Kelly Owens] deal with it,” she said. “I was like, I’m really trying not to go to court while dealing with college and stuff, so I was like, OK, I’ll let the dean deal with it, and if the dean really doesn’t do anything, then that’s when I’ll take legal action.”

UCAPD told her she had a year to decide whether she wanted to press charges, but she has no idea if Hunt received any disciplinary action from UCA.

“I don’t know what the dean said. I don’t know anything about that because nobody told me anything,” Stewart said.

Stewart and Murff requested records from the dean of students’ office about any disciplinary actions regarding their UCAPD reports.

“I have no records that can be released in response to your request,” Dean of Students Kelly Owens said in separate emails to both students.

Stewart said, “I kind of wish that I would have stepped up a little more and put my foot down to do something more about the situation.

“I understand the dean handles students and stuff, but stuff like that, it’s very serious. Everybody on this campus should feel like, ‘OK, this is a safe space for me to come to,’” she said.

“I actually want to take more matters into my own hands and speak up about my story,” Stewart said. “Every organization, there’s something going on with somebody that nobody knows about.”

“I want them to understand that you are not alone. You have people who are going to support you. I don’t care who doesn’t believe you, just know that the people who have been through this situation, we have your back, and we’re going to believe you, and we’re going to help you every step of the way.”

TITLE IX

UCA Title IX Coordinator Adam Rose said in an April 10 interview about general Title IX policies, where these two incidents and any students involved were not mentioned or asked about, “Oftentimes, students, they haven’t really had much experience in romantic relationships. So sometimes, some students are very cautious about how they approach that. Maybe they grew up in a small town, or maybe they have a very religious or conservative family.

“And maybe another student, who’s maybe romantically interested in them doesn’t share that perspective, so sometimes students perceive things that maybe another student would say, ‘That’s normal stuff,’ in a way that’s not necessarily a violation of policy, but we try to give some space.”

Rose said that sometimes when a student asks another student to hang out, one might think it’s a date and the other student isn’t on the same page.

“The other student maybe tries to put their arm around them and kiss them,” he said. “As long as the other student was like, ‘Oh, OK. Sorry, I thought this was something else,’ then that’s how that’s supposed to work. But sometimes students perceive that as, ‘Oh my gosh, they were trying to attack me or violate my rights,’ or something else, and so we kind of walk through that, where that perception is important in terms of development, but it’s not Title IX. So that’s the part that’s more objective and not subjective. We couldn’t discipline a student for doing something that’s not actually violating the law or policy.”

Hunt said in a March 8 Instagram post, “I’ve decided to further my education to continue to work with college students. I have been admitted to the College Student Personnel and Administration Graduate Program here at UCA.”