When administrators tried belief based-RSOs from preventing those who disagree with their beliefs from joining, he challenged them and threatened CMU with a federal lawsuit. The school backed down and recognized what they were doing was illegal.

When the school hired a professor who didn't want to teach students and instead run for Congress, he stood up and said Gary Peters should commit to campus.

When CMU tried banning videotaping on campus, he stood up and the ACLU told the school to drop its videotaping ban and restore students' Constitutional rights.

Dennis Lennox stands up for students.

Katie Horn posted Sept. 8, 2008 at 6:19 p.m. commenting on "Lennox: Forums discriminate against group"

Anything involving e-mail and Dennis Lennox is bound to be a news story after three English Department professors (Jeffrey Weinstock, Allegra Blake and Catherine Hicks Kennard) used a university e-mail listserv last year to pyscho analyze whether the video camera-wielding Lennox was "Virginia Tech (gunman) dangerous."

As one of the first CM Life journalists who had to encounter this combative patriot, I'm also suffering from Lennox Fatigue.

But the university has handled so many of his controversial moments poorly.

The Gary Peters debacle was predictable. If you put a high affluent liberal Democrat with future political ambitions into a plush university teaching job, you're bound to get some political backlash. That job should be reserved for statesmen (or women) who are no longer seeking higher public office as Congressional candidate Gary Peters currently is. It was an obvious pander to the Granholm administration to take care of their boy (he's a former lottery commissioner) while he runs for Congress.

Go back and read a story from Oct. 21, 2005 when Lennox threw a fit that he couldn't protest a visit by Gov. Jennifer Granholm inside the IT building.

CMU officials were right to kick his butt outside to the parking lot (campus rules state you must hold protests 25 feet away from a building - a rule that got bent for students advocating for MLK Day off a few years ago).

But what provoked Lennox to be there in the first place?

The public university let Granholm hold a political round table event with displaced workers and unionists free of charge. And the people who got to attend were screened by the Granholm campaign, so it was an open event in a taxpayer-owned building.

That's outrageous. The university shouldn't be supporting staged, partisan politics like that, as University President Rao learned the hard way the previous fall during the Melanie Foster debacle.

My biggest question about this story is who is on the Speak Up, Speak Out panel? If it's all liberals or all liberals and one token moderate, then Dennis Lennox has every right to complain.

Is it discrimination to keep ultra-conservatives out of a mostly liberal discussion before a mostly liberal and naive crowd of college students? That's for the diversity police to decide.

Chad Livengood

posted 9/07/08 at 2:18 p.m.