RSS
Home
IUPUI employee, student finally receives apology
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
A janitor whom a university official accused of racial harassment for reading a book about the Ku Klux Klan has received a formal apology from the school.
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis chancellor, Charles Bantz, apologized to Keith Sampson in a letter dated Friday, saying the school is committed to free expression.
The situation began last year when a co-worker complained after seeing Sampson reading Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan. The book’s cover features robed Klansmen and burning crosses on Notre Dame’s campus. The book gives an account of the 1924 riot between Notre Dame students and the Klan in which the students from the South Bend university prevailed.
Sampson, who is in addition to working for the university is also a student majoring in communication students, said he tried to explain that the book was a historical account.
“I have an interest in American history,” Sampson said. “I was trying to educate myself.”
But Sampson says his union representative equated the book to bringing pornography to work, and the school’s affirmative action officer told Sampson his conducted constituted racial harassment.
“You used extremely poor judgment by insisting on openly reading the book related to a historically and racially abhorrent subject in the presence of your black co-workers,” Lillian Charleston wrote in a letter to Sampson.
American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana attorney Ken Falk said the accusations were ridiculous.
“I am sure you see the absurdity of a university threatening an employee with discipline for reading a scholarly work that deals with the efforts of Notre Dame students in the 1920s to fight the KKK,” Falk said.
In February, IUPUI informed Sampson that no disciplinary action would taken because the affirmative action office was unable to determine whether his conduct was intended to disrupt thee workplace environment.
The apology to Sampson this week is being denounced by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a group that has fought for student rights around the country. The group believes the second letter was not good enough.
“By first finding Sampson guilty of racial harassment simply for reading a book in the break room, then refusing to admit the gross impropriety of such a finding, IUPUI make a mockery of its legal and moral obligations as a public institution of higher learning,” wrote Adam Kissel, the group’s Individual Rights Defense Program director.
The apology comes after a column in The Wall Street Journal rekindled criticism. Chancellor Bantz also wrote to the other involved in the incident, including the co-worker who filed the complaint, said IUPUI spokesman Rich Schneider.
“The sentiment of the chancellor was expressing in all of the letters was that this whole matter could have and should have been handled differently,” he said.
Sampson, who still works for the school, said he accepts the university’s apology but that he was hurt by the allegations and has not enjoyed being in the news.
“It’s really frustrating for me because I am not the kind of person that they were painting me as,” he said.
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
