WWU admissions chief placed on leave

[SecularMotion]

In July, Kayle Walls, an assistant director of admissions at WWU, filed a complaint with the school's Equal Opportunity Office based on comments Copetas made about a candidate for an admissions-counselor job.

According to the Equal Opportunity Office report, Copetas compared two candidates for the job based on their religions, favoring a woman who is Muslim, and "went on to speak openly about the candidates' religious backgrounds."

In the report, she is quoted as saying: "We owe it to our state and I think it says a lot for us as a university to have a representative that is a warm Muslim woman and to show them that Muslims ... you know, they are not all terrorists."

In an interview, Copetas said she had worked with the woman before, and believed her to be an exceptional candidate. "It wasn't intended to be a comment about religion at all," she said.

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