Ward Churchill Speaks at Depaul: PRELUDE

When I heard that Ward Churchill had been invited to speak at DePaul University in my beautiful home city of Chicago, I immediately reserved the date...to PROTEST. There are any number of reasons to do so but, for anyone not familiar, you can read about the man and some of what he stands for here, here and here.

So I went online to see if there was any buzz about his lecture on October 20th. During my research I came upon an interesting tidbit over at Marathon Pundit. According to an "anonymous tipster," Churchill's "Multicultural Human Rights Education Workshop," offerred on the following day and originally advertised as being For Student Organizations Only, had been changed to Open to Student Organizations which are supported by Cultural Center's Allocation Fund.

Curious about whether the alleged change in who was welcome to attend the workshop was accurate, I called the DePaul Cultural Center today to find out for myself.

When someone answered the phone, I first asked a couple of general questions about the Thursday evening lecture, and was told that it was open to the DePaul community only. Fair enough -- that matched what I'd read online. I gave my full name and stated that I was writing an article for the Freedom Folks blog, and asked about the discrepancy I'd seen reported online regarding the workshop on Friday. There was a pause, then the woman asked who I was. Even though I had just told her, I repeated my name and that I was a blogger working on an article. She told me that nothing had changed about the workshop.

I asked if she could tell me what the Cultural Center's Allocation Fund was, and received an abrupt "I don't have any more information for you."

I thanked her for her time, and asked for her name for my story.

"I don't have to tell you that." CLICK.

She hung up on me. And I thought I was curious BEFORE the evasive, rude treatment I received from the Cultural Center! Of course, this only made me more determined to find out what I could about Ward Churchill's visit to the DePaul campus.

I went on the school's website this evening and, lo and behold, easily found out what the Cultural Center Allocation Fund is about...

The goal of the Cultural Center Allocations Fund is to provide funding to cultural and ethnic student organizations for the promotion of underrepresented and marginalized communities, including African American, American Indian, Asian, Ethnic Greek, GLBT, Jewish, Latino/a, and Muslim. These campus activities educate, inform, and enliven the sponsoring group and the university community at large.

Fair enough, although I'm not sure how the "university community at large" is educated, informed and enlivened if they aren't invited to the activity. But why the cold shoulder when I asked about the Allocation Fund?

And if the university is proud to welcome Mr. Churchill to speak on their campus, why is he namelessly promoted like this (bold is mine)?

Lecture on Human Rights
10/20/2005 - 10/20/2005
5:30 PM - 8:00 PM
LPC
Student Center Room 314-A
A dynamic and prolific speaker with politically unique views
Cultural Center
culturalcenter@depaul.edu, 773/325-7759
http:\\culturalcenter.depaul.edu
Group Meeting
DePaul Community

As soon as I finish this posting, I will be e-mailing Harvette Grey, Executive Director of the Cultural Center. Maybe she will have some answers for me and, if she does, I'll be sure to pass them on.

Until Thursday...