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From: [email withheld]
Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 2004 9:33 PM
To: GLBT/Straight Alliance listserv
Subject: [glbtsa] Re: Petition to the Chancellor

My apologies for that not having come through…

Please read the following carefully, and sign on to the petition, worded below, if you are in agreement. Anyone affiliated with UNC – Chapel Hill (students, faculty, staff) is welcome to sign on.

Monday and Tuesday of this week (the 19th and 20th) the Office of Civil Rights of the Department of Education was up on Franklin Street interviewing members of Elyse Crystall’s class and otherwise generally investigating whether labeling one of her students as “white,” “male,” and “heterosexual,” (as he had previously self-identified) constituted racial and sexual harassment.

We are petitioning the Chancellor because we feel that this is a perversion of anti-discrimination codes and sets a dangerous precedent for future federal intervention into university matters by opening up the potential for the following.

Existing anti-harassment and anti-discrimination policies based on race, gender, and sexual orientation, that are meant to protect those who are historically marginalized may be rendered meaningless. If a student self-identifies as ?white,? ?male,? and ?heterosexual? ? which of his rights are being violated when a professor refers to these identity characteristics in an academic context? It is this same attempt to pervert anti-discrimination codes that lets some people feel able to call the Sonya Haynes Stone Black Cultural Center racist and exclusionary.

Professors may no longer be able to decide how and on what grounds their classes will be run. Professors must be able to lay ground rules for dialogue within their classes, just as they must be allowed to guide discussion as they see fit. The classroom is not the equivalent of any arbitrary open and public space.

UNC internal policies and policy-making mechanisms may no longer be considered valid, and may be constantly subject to federal reinterpretation. By requiring UNC to grant investigators access to private Blackboard posts of students as well as anything else they “see fit” to investigate, student and faculty rights to privacy as well as the truest sense of academic freedom are very much in jeopardy.

The specific wording of the petition is as follows:

We the undersigned affirm our commitment to the cultivation of an academic environment at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that is both safe for and inclusive of all students and is principled on the concept of academic freedom. We feel the recent decision of the Dept. of Education to investigate UNC-Chapel Hill constitutes an unnecessary federal intervention for several reasons.

One, it has the potential to harm this academic environment by creating a chilling effect on professors who take steps to make their classroom more respectful.

Two, this investigation will dilute the academic integrity of all classrooms by restricting professorial autonomy in teaching, researching, and developing courses.

And three, this investigation compromises UNC-Chapel Hill?s internal policies and policy-creating mechanisms, and could subject our school?s code to constant re-interpretation. UNC-Chapel Hill must do everything it can, in spite of this investigation, to ensure that our university remains committed to both the cultivation of respectful environments in classrooms and the maintenance of academic integrity.

Please e-mail [name withheld by Locker Room] to sign on. We will be presenting the petition this Friday morning so please reply immediately. Also, if you have any questions or concerns or desire more information on the situation, please e-mail [name withheld] as well.
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