Is UNC-CH Discriminating?

For weeks, Jon Sanders has been writing about the legal dispute between UNC-Chapel Hill and the Christian fraternity it “derecognized,” Alpha Iota Omega (AIO). His analysis has been published in The Wall Street Journal and this week he joined NBC 17’s “At Issue” to discuss it, even though UNC-CH declined an invitation to appear on the show. UNC-CH maintains it is upholding the Constitution and preventing discrimination with its non-discrimination clause – something student organizations are required to sign. AIO has filed a federal lawsuit over the action. Meanwhile, in a separate conflict at UNC-CH, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights has determined that instructor Elyse Crystall did, indeed, sexually and racially discriminate against and harass a student in class last fall. Sanders has written extensively on the case, and this week, his follow-up piece about the ruling was published in
Campus Report Online, an online news service that documents and publicizes political bias in education. Sanders noted that ironically, UNC-CH Faculty Council Chairman Judith Wegner had, last fall, defended Crystall, telling local newspapers Crystall had simply made a mistake. This week, however, Wegner applied a very different standard to a chemistry professor when she ranted in a letter to the editor of The Daily Tar Heel. The professor had opened his home to Playboy magazine for its “Girls of the ACC” shoot. Wegner called that “inexcusable.”