A picture of U.S. Sen. Barack Obama on a character education poster at UMSL was put back up this afternoon.

Art Leverenz, an UMSL junior, just called me to tell me that Provost Glen Cope sent his class an email today apologizing for the picture’s removal, which was apparently done without a full understanding of how the picture was being used. (I have pasted Cope’s email to the class at the bottom of this post.)

As you might remember, the picture was removed last week after the university received a complaint about it. The poster was one of several made for a class project and that continues to hang in a classroom. Cope ordered Obama’s picture to be removed from the poster because of a university policy that prohibits the use of university resources or facilities to endorse for or against political candidates.

But the students in the class complained about the picture’s removal, arguing that it was not a political poster. Rather, they noted that Obama was being used as one of a couple of examples (Gandhi being another notable one) of good role models and leaders. The poster also includes a quote from Obama about the Civil Rights Movement. (To see a picture of the poster, click here to go to a previous blog post about this topic.)

Finally, here is Cope’s email:

Subject: Character Educaiton Poster Project

Dear Ms. Wiseman, Mr. Harris, and others:

Thank you for the additional information provided about the nature of the class poster project by Mr. Harris and Ms. Wiseman.  Based on our investigation of the purpose and intent of the class assignment and the posters that were placed in 219 SCCB, we have concluded that the poster showing Senator Barak Obama and other famous individuals was not intended to be political in nature.  Also, the posters were left hanging in the public, shared classroom after the end of the class session at the instructor’s request as part of the class assignment.

As you know, there was a complaint that the poster was political in nature and was placed in the public classroom during the pre-election time period, which caused us to remove the photograph of Senator Obama from the poster, as was explained previously.  Since we have now concluded that the poster is not political in nature, the picture of Senator Obama may be replaced on the poster.  It is my understanding that the picture was returned to students from the class.  It may be replaced in the classroom and remain as part of the class project, as long as the class projects are posted.

We remain concerned about classroom materials remaining in shared, public classrooms, but this is not the concern of the students in this class, who were acting according to their instructor’s directions.  We’ll address that in another way.

Please accept our apologies for any disruption caused while we were investigating this issue.

Yours truly,

Glen Hahn Cope, Ph.D.
Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs University of Missouri-St. Louis
426 Woods Hall
One University Boulevard
St. Louis, Missouri 63121-4400