by Christopher Chow

Chance Shipman returned to class on January 14th for the first time since the University of Oklahoma forced him to withdraw last September. The administration had accused Shipman, a wrestler at the school, and his friend Gary Frizzell of committing what OU described as a "hate crime" assault against Pakistani student Mohammad Yaseen Haider. Haider has since been charged with sending anthrax threats.

The University of Oklahoma now faces a lawsuit from Shipman, for removing him without any hearing or investigation. Frizzell has hired an attorney to look into the matter. Other students on campus are troubled by the perception that the University was more concerned with seeming to crack down on "hate crimes" than determining the students' guilt or innocence.

Haider had accused Shipman and Frizzell of beating him at the convenience store where he worked on September 16th.

On September 16th, Shipman, Frizzell, another male, and two female students, had just returned from a fishing trip when they tried to buy alcohol from Haider at the convenience store where he worked. Since none of the five was 21, Haider refused. The situation did not end there.

According to Haider after a verbal altercation the three males knocked him to the ground and beat him shouting, "Get out of our country," and "Don't touch Americans again." He claimed to have suffered partial loss of hearing and a sprained neck that forced him to where a neck brace. Haider later admitted that the neck brace was, "Just for fun."

Shipman's version of events differs dramatically. He says that after the exchange of insults, Haider followed them outside and the two wrestled on the ground. He denies that anyone ever struck Haider or made anti-Arab comments.

Norman Oklahoma police did site Shipman and Frizzell with "misdemeanor assault" but made no arrests.

After hearing of the allegations, Vice President of Student Affairs, Clarke Stroud, called Shipman into his office to discuss the incident. The school administration threatened to expel Shipman immediately without a hearing if he did not sign a contract agreeing to leave the school with the semester's tuition returned, and to never file a lawsuit against the school. Afraid that an expulsion would destroy his academic record, he signed the contract.

Frizzell said that the administration also pressured him out in November. Frizzell was also readmitted, and will return to class in the Fall. He has hired an attorney to look into the matter.

Two days after the incident, University President David Boren announced that after speaking with Haider, he had decided to remove Shipman and was bringing student code violation charges against Frizzell.

Boren even gave Haider a work-study job at Parkview Apartments.

Chance Shipman's father, Steve, accused Boren of overreacting after the September 11th attacks to anything that appeared anti-Muslim. "Boren wanted to sweep it under the rug as soon as possible."

Norman police stated that the fact Haider went after Shipman was a major fact in not filing more charges. A clerk at the 7-Eleven across the street told the police that Haider was the aggressor. "The Norman Police Department never approached it as a hate crime," commented police Lieutenant Glenn Dobry. "Boren took a very aggressive response."

Authorities began looking into Haider's background after the incident. On November 8th, Immigration and Naturalization Service agents arrested Haider and his two roommates, Nabeel Khalid and Mohammad Imran Shaikh, for violating their student visas by being employed off campus.

The roommates were released after a month in custody. Khalid moved back to Pakistan. Shaikh still lives in Norman. Haider was set to be deported on December 13th. But a week later he was charged with threatening to mail anthrax to a woman he was harassing on the internet.

The e-mail read, "I hate you slut woman I want you out of my life… I will send you anthrax in the mail and Bin Laden will hunt you down."

Haider claimed that someone had hacked into his computer and written the message.

A federal judge declared Haider a "danger to the community." In addition to the anthrax threat, he was wanted for stalking local women and for indecent exposure incidents. He'd also allegedly threatened an OU professor. Haider faces up to five years in prison for the anthrax threat.

Shipman and the University of Oklahoma have refused to comment on the incident, both citing the pending lawsuit.

"You don't know how upset this makes me-that this happened to these boys," said Steve Shipman. "Chance has never been in an ounce of trouble with the school or the law. To have this happen is just unjust."

Steve Shipman accused President Boren of overreacting after the September 11th attacks to anything that appeared anti-Muslim. He couldn't understand why his son wasn't given an opportunity to defend himself. He fears his son's wrestling career may have been permanently damaged by the incident. "If this happened before September 11th, this wouldn't have been a big deal. Boren wanted to sweep it under the rug as soon as possible."

Shipman has yet to be readmitted to the University's wrestling team. "That's an administrative thing," said wrestling coach Jake Spates. "From what I know about Chance, he's a good kid who hasn't had any history of trouble."

Frizzell's father believed in his son's innocence. He claimed, "Gary is in no way guilty."

University of Oklahoma students have expressed concern regarding how it took administrators five months to clear the two students, when the matter could have been resolved with a hearing back in September. The OU newspaper The Oklahoma Daily blasted the administration in a column by Cassandra Showell. "No one let Shipman and Frizzell be innocent before they could be proven guilty, and no one stopped to consider the monstrous incentive that always exists in such situations for members of a predetermined victim groups to take advantage of public sympathy and gullibility," Showell wrote. "Why did President Boren and other OU officials make Shipman sign that document? Because they knew that taking the side of the white guy against the Pakistani would be an open invitation for minority activists to label his administration racist."

"OU must do better, folks," the article continued. "We rushed to a conclusion when one didn't need to be reached immediately and we did it because we wanted to look tolerant and diverse and a million other saintly adjectives. Now we'll never know what happened-were two people put through heck because we were too busy picking sides based on the higher law of selective tolerance?"