IUPUI Minority Students Pressure School to Improve Diversity Outreach

Diverse Issues in Higher Education
by Lekan Oguntoyinbo , August 12, 2010

It was the kind of crisis most universities dread.
In November 2006, a group of minority student leaders at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis threatened to sue the university if administrators did not heed demands that included providing more funding for multicultural student groups.
In a letter to university administrators, the leader of the university’s Black Student Union also appealed for the hiring of more African-American faculty and administrators. The demands came on the heels of several concerns expressed by minority students, including the fact that they did not feel welcome on campus and that requests for excursions by Black student groups were often rejected.

Full Story: http://diverseeducation.com/article/14033/iupui-minority-students-pressure-school-to-improve-diversity-outreach.html

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