From Townhall:
A DePaul University bake sale, mocking affirmative action, has exposed the student who organized the sale to an investigation on the grounds that he discriminated against and harassed other students.
The Chicago-based school is investigating whether senior Michael O'Shea may have violated the school's anti-discriminatory harassment policy with an "affirmative action bake sale" he organized with the DePaul Conservative Alliance (DCA).
Affirmative action bake sales, in which white and Asian students are charged more for baked goods than blacks and Hispanics, are popular among conservative activists on college campuses. They are designed to criticize affirmative action policies, not to raise funds.
After the DCA protest sparked what the school's student weekly newspaper called "a heated conversation" among students, university officials told organizers to shut down the bake sale. On Jan. 20, O'Shea received notification that the event was under investigation.
University spokeswoman Denise Mattson told Cybercast News Service that the review was launched because "there was a question about what the application for the event read and how it was characterized, versus how it unfolded."
Here's a Denise Mattson flashback from about a year ago, as she discusses the Thomas Klocek incident, courtesy of Inside Higher Ed:
Denise Mattson, a spokeswoman for DePaul, described the dispute in a different way. She said that the students noticed Klocek before he stopped by their table, walking back and forth and “acting in an odd way.” Once he arrived at the table, he was ‘belligerent” and “menacing,” Mattson said, shaking and pointing his finger very close to students’ faces. He was so threatening that other students who were present “ran to get help from staff, saying that students were being attacked by a professor.”
Mattson said no physical attack took place, and that the closest anything came to it was when Klocek threw some of the materials he picked up back at the students. And she said that Klocek returned to the activities fair even after university officials asked him to leave.
She said that the subject of the argument had nothing to do with the university’s concern. “It could have been about anything,” she said. “DePaul took action because we had to protect our students.”
After the incident, Klocek was placed on paid leave for the fall (the university says it was a mutual decision — he says he had no choice), given no courses for the winter quarter, and given the option of having one in the spring — if he apologized to the students he offended and agreed to let a program director periodically visit his classroom to see him in action.
When DePaul offered Klocek its conditions for his return to the classroom, he decided to hire a lawyer, and this month he staged his bound and gagged press conference. To him, the incident is about free speech. “The people who run this school are confusing Christian values with political correctness.”
But to DePaul, it’s anything but. “He’s becoming a cause célèbre for academic freedom, and he isn’t,” Mattson said.
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