IUPUI employee, student finally receives apology

Examiner.com
November 5, 4:02 PM
Indianapolis Statehouse Examiner

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.

Full Story: http://www.examiner.com/x-19365-Indianapolis-Statehouse-Examiner~y2009m11d5-IUPUI-employee-student-finally-receives-apology