RENSSELAERVILLE — After spending the summer as an Odum intern at the Huyck Preserve in the Helderbergs, Jamaine Hunt is heading home to West Virginia this week feeling raw.

He believes he was discriminated against because of his color and his gender. “I’m brown,” he said, explaining that is father, Victor Mokonea, was from South Africa  — “he came over through the Catholic church for a better life in America,” said Hunt — and his mother, Azelle, is Cherokee.

Hearing of Hunt’s complaints through The Enterprise on Tuesday, Dawn O’Neal, the director of the Huyck Preserve, said she felt “blindsided,” since much of it was new to her. “It’s making me sad to hear — both for the preserve and as a black woman,” said O’Neal.

Hunt, 26, a rising junior at West Virginia State University, is majoring in criminal justice and would like to work as a “natural resource police officer dealing with things like chemical spills,” he said, or for the United Nations, “doing something for the environment.” He had worked for several years “in retail and customer service,” he said, before going to the historically black university.

This summer, Hunt was one of four Odum interns — the program is named for Dr. Eugene Odum often called the father of ecosystem ecology, who launched his career at the Huyck Preserve. The undergraduate students did research and learned from mentors and visiting speakers; the other three interns were females.

Hunt arrived in Rensselaerville on June 5. On the night of June 6, he said, “My mentor said something that bothered me so much, I blocked it out…He threw a line about my color.”

Although Hunt couldn’t summon up the comment, he said of his mentor, “He divided me from the group.” Two of the other interns are white, he said, and the third is “half Asian but identifies as white.”

Hunt recalled, “I was upset. When you divide someone from a group, you’re saying they’re lesser.”

He also complained of comments that he said demeaned Native Americans, such as a speaker saying that, in the past, “teenage Native Americans set a fire accidentally,” reported Hunt. Hunt asserted, “Scientists have proven fires can replenish and strengthen habitat.”

He concluded of the Huyck Preserve, “The mentality here is a complete violation of affirmative action...I’m disturbed about the culture and behavior of people here.”

O’Neal responded through The Enterprise, “We did address some of the issues he raised about staff. I thought we came to an acceptable remedy….We had meetings with [his mentor] and I thought we came up with acceptable solutions so he’d feel comfortable.”

But, about the interns, O’Neal said she had not heard those complaints from Hunt before The Enterprise repeated them.

Hunt claimed another intern “flipped out when she learned I went to a historically black college.” As he was standing in the kitchen — the students live at the preserve for the summer — he recalled, “She was inches from my face…I had to put my hand out…She got in my face and asked with a hostile attitude. She did not know what a historic black college was; she did not understand.”

Another time, at 10’o’clock on a rainy night, he was doing his laundry in the basement, which he said was accessible only to people who are part of the Huyck Preserve program. “Someone took my clothes and made it into a game,” he said, noting his has pictures he took of the paper plate that had written on it, “If you want to find your clothes, look where you would buy waders.”

Hunt was not familiar with the word “waders,” tall waterproof boots worn for stream fishing. “I had to Google it,” he said. “It came up to be something on the shore. I didn’t want to go out in the rain to the shore; I just wanted to go to sleep.”

It turned out his clothes were hidden in a box from Cabelas, a store that sells outdoor gear.

Hunt also claimed the three female interns “kept looking in my windows.”

He said, “I’m a male and they’re females…I spent a month at the Bullfrog Camp and the three female interns kept looking in my [bedroom] window…I could be lying in my bed and they would look through my window; there was just a thin cloth,” he said of the curtain, “and I could see someone peering in at me. It was all three girls at different times...It got really disturbing. I brought it up to the director and I moved somewhere else because I didn’t feel safe.”

He said the stress from such incidents made him feel fatigued. “I’ve been feeling sick and getting headaches,” Hunt said.

Finally, he had a complaint about O’Neal herself. Hunt was doing research on ectoparasites, studying feather lice and feather mites that live primarily on perching birds.

“I asked Dr. Dawn if I could mist net on my own,” he said, referring to a process where a net is used to capture birds. “She said, no....That was understandable. I didn’t have years of experience.”

But, then, he went on, “She let a high school girl mist net by herself. She had zero experience.”

“Mist netting is not something you learn quickly,” O’Neal explained. “Some people are better than others.”

O’Neal, who has been the preserve’s director since June of last year and before that was in charge of education and research there, said the program where students learn from senior research fellows and develop independent research projects is a good one that has been satisfying for the vast majority of students.

“I’m still in contact with the undergraduate interns I’ve worked with,” she said. “They’ve all had wonderful experiences here.”

Hunt is pursuing his complaints, and said he was filing for a “discrimination investigation” through Northern Arizona University, through which he is getting credit for his summer internship. He is also filing a complaint with the New York State Division on Human Rights, he said.

“No one should be discriminated against for sex or race,” he said. “It’s unacceptable this is going on. I hope to bring institutional change.”

The woman Hunt was dealing with in the university Equity and Access Office, Amanda Loveless, referred The Enterprise to NAU’s public affairs department. Cynthia Brown, at public affairs said, through email, that complaints of inappropriate conduct in internship settings are infrequent.

“If the complaint is about protected category harassment or discrimination, the NAU student has formal and informal complaint options under the Safe Working Environment Policy (SWALE) which is NAU's anti-harassment and discrimination policy and complaint process,” Brown wrote.

“In a SWALE related formal complaint,” she went on, “the Office of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity would determine if interim measures need to be put in place for the protection of the parties pending the investigation, and then conduct a neutral investigation (contact witnesses, review documents, make credibility determinations and apply policy to the facts) and make a cause or no cause finding of whether the SWALE policy has been violated.

“If the policy was violated, the university would take appropriate steps to remedy the situation and discipline the other individual,” Brown concluded.

“I’ve always been told,” said Hunt, “to put a light where darkness falls and you’ll see creatures that squirm.”

Updated on Aug. 7, 2014 after Cynthia Brown at Northern Arizona University emailed answers to questions posed before publication.