Not one of Elroy's:

http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/Content?oid=84436&category=22101

Suspension of Disbelief

Art Student Expelled -- For Atheism?
BY AMY JENNIGES

Bob Averill's classmates at the Art Institute of Portland had finished
up their work in a character development class on November 8, and were
chatting to pass the time until class was over. The discussion moved
toward spirituality. Averill, a Game Art Design student and a devoted
atheist -- he even runs a blog called Portland Atheist -- sidled over
and joined the conversation.

It was the last time he'd be in an Art Institute class -- within
two weeks, he was expelled, less than a year before he'd hoped to
graduate.

In the classroom that day, Averill says one young woman was talking
about her belief in energy layers and astral beings.

"I jokingly asked her if she believed in leprechauns. It turns out, she
does. They live on another energy layer," Averill wrote in notes to
himself later that day. "In the interest of bringing my own view to the
discussion, I began to ask her how she knew these things. Again I know
all too well that people can be sensitive about their spiritual beliefs,
so I was pretty much walking on glass as I did so."

Averill says he wasn't trying to disprove the other student's religious
beliefs, but "to convince her not to insist that they were
scientifically proven."

The student, apparently offended, complained to the teacher. Averill was
called into a meeting that evening, he says, with the Art Institute's
dean of education, associate dean, and the dean of student affairs.

According to Averill, he was told the meeting was "because of my
altercation with [the other student]." Averill says he pointed out that
he'd "only offered a different viewpoint in a discussion that [my
classmate] had started."

"They didn't respond well," Averill told the Mercury. "Their mantra was
'no discussing religion in school,' which is fine except that I did not
initiate the conversation, she had." Averill was suspended for four
days, until a judicial hearing with the dean of student affairs.

Immediately after the meeting with the deans, Averill found a classmate
who had witnessed the initial conversation, and dragged him to the
dean's office. "I thought I could clear this up, this is just a
misunderstanding." (The witness did not respond to an inquiry from the
Mercury.)

But the associate dean, Averill says, "told me she didn't want to hear
from me again that day. So she reported it to the dean as rude and
belligerent behavior."

At the judicial hearing, on November 17, Dean of Student Affairs Ron
Engeldinger was more focused on the "rude and belligerent behavior"
report from the associate dean, Averill says, than on the initial
conversation about religion.

Then Engeldinger, he says, brought up the fact that Averill had had some
trouble with three instructors in October. "The thing is, I had already
had a meeting with the associate dean about [that]. We resolved the
issue and I apologized to the professors involved." Averill was
surprised that Engeldinger brought it up again.

"I expressed that I felt discriminated against as an atheist, and he
informed me that mine was not a protected class of people," Averill
says.

Averill has since contacted the Oregon chapter of the American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU) and Freedom from Religion Foundation, based in
the Midwest. He says the Freedom from Religion Foundation told him to
seek legal counsel, and he expects the ACLU will respond to his inquiry
within 60 days.

According to an emailed letter from Engeldinger, Averill had violated
the student conduct policy. The decision to dismiss Averill was "not the
result of a single action on your part, but a series of actions. I
believe that, in several instances, your actions have been aggressive,
demeaning, and threatening and that this demonstrates a pattern of
inappropriate and unacceptable behavior," Engeldinger wrote.

The student who complained on November 8 wished to remain anonymous, but
her account backs up Engeldinger's letter. Her complaint was not the
only reason he was sent into the Dean's office. The teacher even told me
that my complaint was the 'last straw' as SEVERAL other complaints were
stated before mine."

However, she says she "did not wish for him to be expelled or get in
trouble and I had no idea that it was going to happen until after the
fact."

On Monday morning, November 20, Averill met with the school's president,
Dr. Steven Goldman, to appeal his dismissal. "He upheld the dean's
decision to throw me out," Averill says. "He offered to re-admit me if I
underwent -- get this -- psychiatric evaluation."

Goldman declined to discuss specifics without Averill's permission.

"I can say that we have never suspended or terminated or disciplined or
otherwise troubled any student at any time about religious issues. It's
never even come up as an issue," says Goldman, who also teaches a
comparative religion class at the school. Given the Art Institute's
liberal arts curriculum, there is no policy against discussing religion
or philosophy, "or any other subject as far as I know. We have an
academic community in which people are free to explore ideas."