A former Kent State University grad student and instructor resigned from his most recent role after details surfaced about a bizarre pattern of behavior involving students, face paint and clowns. Accusations date back at least 5 years to his time at KSU.
USA Today reports Joseph Tokosh was recruiting students to allow him to paint their faces like clowns, sometimes in exchange for money or extra credit in his geography class at Nicholls State University.
Former Kent State student Sophie Levan first encountered Tokosh on a KSU Class of 2021 Facebook page for incoming freshmen.
“It was just intended for freshmen. And I had the assumption that anyone posting on the page was also a freshman,” she explained.
A user named “Joe Tokosh” posted on the page, asking if anyone would allow him to practice his face painting skills on them in exchange for money. Several “examples” of his work on the post included women with their faces painted to look like clowns or skulls.
“I thought it was a good offer because I didn’t have a job at the time. I was into makeup, special effects sort of makeup. So I thought if I could get face paint done and get paid, it sounded like a win-win,” Levan recalled.
She told News 5 that the messages exchanged, first through Facebook and then via text, seemed innocent enough at first. But she started to second-guess his intentions when she discovered the man she thought was her peer was actually a grad student nearly a decade her senior. When she more closely examined the examples he frequently posted in KSU forums, she realized they were photos taken from elsewhere on the internet.
“Another red flag was the fact that he was rushing me to do it all the time. Then we agreed to come to my dorm to do it with my roommate, and then he changed his mind and was like, ‘Can you come to me? I can pick you up.’ And I didn’t feel comfortable with that,” Levan said.
In January 2018, Levan filed a report with the KSU campus police department. Officers advised her to stop communication with Tokosh, but she said she never heard anything more from the university.
Kent State also shared a similar police report with News 5, filed a year earlier by another female student. The young woman told officers Tokosh got her phone number from another freshman Facebook group and had been contacting her over the past year asking if “she was interested in having her face painted for one of his class projects.”
“You say ‘Kent State facepaint clown’ I know exactly what you’re talking about,” Lydia Eyster told News 5 Friday.
The former Kent State student had similar interactions with Tokosh when she was a freshman in 2016. The following year, she responded to a KSU tweet calling for campus love stories.
“A geography professor requested me on Facebook and asked if he could paint my face like a clown,” Eyster’s 2017 read.
She said she never reported the interaction, brushing it off as bizarre. In 2018, another graduate student in the geography department emailed her to ask about the tweet. He said another female student was approached in a “much more aggressive way,” and he was trying to determine whether the requests came from the same man.
Eyster said she found a draft email years later and realized she never responded to the inquiry.
“If someone messaged me and said, ‘I want to hurt you,’ I would report that. But he didn’t,” she recalled. “He said, ‘I want to paint your face.’ And I was like, ‘This is weird.’”
According to the USA Today report, Tokosh was also serving as an instructor while finishing his Ph.D. work at Kent State. The university shared an October 2018 police report alleging Tokosh unlawfully entered his fellow grad student’s office and took a USB drive. USA Today said Tokosh left KSU shortly after pleading no contest to the related theft charge.
Following his time in Kent, the USA Today report says Tokosh filled a similar role at Northern Illinois University before working as an assistant professor at Nicholls State University in Louisiana.
Officials at Nicholls confirmed to News 5 that Tokosh resigned from his position in March 2023 after student journalists published a report about his conduct.
Several students told the “Nicholls Worth” Tokosh offered extra credit points to some who agreed to let him paint their faces. After his resignation, the university said it launched a Title IX investigation. A spokesperson says Tokosh is no longer affiliated with the school.
Levan said she questioned Tokosh’s intentions but was shocked to learn the scope of his efforts to recruit students.
“The girls didn’t know they’re participating in his fetish. And he’s having them do that without their consent. So it’s definitely unethical, especially if he’s using his power as an instructor or professor,” she said.
Kent State officials said they could not discuss specifics in Tokosh’s case, citing protections for grad students outlined by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).
“Our police department confirms that the two students were provided university resources, which would include other non-criminal avenues to pursue [Counseling Services, Title IX, Center for Sexual and Relationship Violence Services, etc.] as a general police practice,” a KSU spokesperson told News 5 via email.
Levan doesn’t recall receiving resources or any communication from the university after she filed the police report. She said Tokosh sent her a photo months later of himself with clown makeup.
“It was a very creepy photo with seemingly creepy intentions,” Levan said.
As recently as this year, she said he’s also sent her social media friend requests.
This week, News 5 found several Reddit posts from the former professor of women in clown makeup, including one explicit photo with the caption, “Trust me, I’m winning.”
News 5 attempted to reach Tokosh for comment via social media and left a voicemail on a number connected to his name. He has not responded to our requests.
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