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.”
The problem with atheists is that they are so fanatical about their region.
What region would that be, starkmojo? The Americas, Europe, Asia, perhaps Africa?
Sounds like the issue isn’t Bob’s atheism, but how he treats others when he discusses it.
as noted,
…”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,”
This strikes me as just another fanatical, intolerant, opinionated and immature atheist with behaviour issues who is misrepresenting the facts around the matter than it does any kind of discrimination on the part of the school.
Since the article only shows one side (Bob’s), and the school was under a “gag order” not to discuss, while Bob was giving his version to the press, and none of his fellow students were allowed to comment on the incident, I think Bob was playing the “victim card” here.
The PROBLEM is idiots like starkmojo who generalize people.
I think religion is bullshit. I don’t go around saying anyone who follows a certain religion must be an idiot. But I DO generalize people who generalize. Following stark?
Yes there are fanatics from every religion, culture, race or what have you. That doesn’t mean because some ass kills for their cause or speaks blindly, that everyone else from that same group is just as ignorant.
People are led into their beliefs. Not many, if any people at all, are born and realize they were destined to be Christian, Catholic, gay, white/black power, war mongering, peace loving etc…
Most everybody was influenced. Regardless of how great the path they follow, you can not control anyones state of mind at the time they are converted.
And I see as most others do, there are plenty of confused people who can get most of the picture but are just confused about life in general. There are just WAY too many factors involved in each and every one of our live’s to say anyone is “healed” or officially a model citizen just because they signed up under a massively accepted group or following.
Get a clue earthlings… I believe the best way to ultimately heal the earth and ourselves as a species is to spread peace and love. Am I a hippy? No. I was a gangbanger in L.A. county as a kid. Then I joined the military. Then I got out after realizing even that was a giant horse and pony show.
Don’t follow people. Gather your own facts and ask questions to people who follow religions. Stay away from mass hypes. Try to put the whole picture into perspective. Do a little history researching. When you find YOUR truth, reason with it for a while to try to perfect it.
Spread it if you like, just don’t force it down anyones throat or bash others simply because they haven’t seen your light.
How many times do athiests get attacked verbally, ridiculed, ostracized, demeaned for their lack of belief in a “God?”. I have had this done to me numerous times when I was in school and the response by the people in charge was to ignore and even chastise me for complaining. A single word in retaliation and it was detention and even more attacks for me. That is the real thing, unless you have “faith” you are forced to endure that without complaint as a second-class citizen.
http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Legorobot
Idiots, here’s an article of quotes from Bob’s classmates.
20% of “Americans” believe in leprechauns – the same proportion who think that Obama is a Muslim, and was born in Kenya.
Need I say more!?
Thank Dog I was born, reared and educated in N.Z.
immature atheist vs leprechaun fan = LOSING PROPOSITION
Starkmojo, you must have just come to earth from Mars. Atheist are so fanatical, about their religion, are you for real? The doctrine of discovery, the doctrine of dispossesion, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the burnings of witches and heretics, colonialism, slavery, countless genocidal acts premeditated on the fact that they-(the others) believe different. So here we are now in 2011 and you want to wipe the slate of religions horrors clean. Because in your little life time, religion has psuedo cloaked itself in outward good deeds. I must give christianity and islam their full due, they’re followers have embarked on an intimidation campaign, that will never be matched. If you would just spend 10 hours reading something unslanted to favor religions, view on reality, you might free yourself up to enjoy the beauty of an unrepentant life.
We are truly becoming the laughing stock of the world, while the rest of the technology based world, speeds by. Don’t you realize that religion was never an elective choice, you either went along or you were killed or banished. Only as of recently have the voices of dissent, had the forum and constitutional protections to air those views. The international scientific community continues piling on on evidence on top of evidence and yet many just write it off as scientific mumbo jumbo.
Oh yeah, I have research scripture, from several versions of bibles. Truth be told, it’s a great testamonty to the creativity of the human mind. Adaptive, ambiguous, textually imaginitive but at the end of the day and at the end of history, a creation of the human mind. Go to youtube and look up professor Bart Ehrman, a professor of religious studies.
You my friend…… have been played. Atheist just don’t want you to be the last to know.
Have a good day and peace be with you on your journey for truth.
that school’s a horrible place anyway. it’s a crap excuse to kick someone out but he should be glad they did. i have all sorts of stories from when i went there, and if the teaches he got into arguments with were like the ones when i was there, he probably wasn’t at blame. one of the last classes i had to take that was required to graduate, the entire class consisted of the teacher coming in for half an hour and talking about how her week was, what movies she had seen, etc. when students asked her questions about what they were supposed to be doing she would blow them off and mark them down without explaining why. most of the people in that class always failed. one teacher would come in and bring a guest speaker every week and wouldn’t even take roll. she made the guest speaker do that. and then she would steal student work and sell it as her own. another one would usually come in drunk, and on one occasion started throwing pencils at students. he also wouldn’t give you the time of day unless you had gone to the bar next door and bought him a drink or you were a woman. and let’s not forget their job placement service for graduates, where they kept you up to date at all the openings at kinko’s!
Don’t go to the Art Institute of Portland. I went there. The teachers were okay, not bad or good, just okay. Some of the other students had “mental problems” or were very abrasive or rude, even the ones I was “friends” with, through their my other friends of course. I wasn’t really close with anyone else there anyway.
Then I got expelled. My name is Tim Joynt and I got expelled for stealing handsoap from the bathroom. It was part prank and part serious. Money was tight and I needed something to wash my hands with. They expelled me and still made me pay back all that money. I was a year from graduating too. I know it was stupid but they were also stupid for kicking me out over a little thing like that. I think they dubbed it as “vandalism” even though I wasn’t arrested or reported to the cops or had my parents told or anything.
Also when I first moved in to “student housing”, the apartment they put me in originally had 4-5 homeless people living there along with a current enrolled student and a ferret. There were ferret droppings all over the place and it smelled like shit. It was all taken care of by me and my dad telling the “school’s housing director” about it, who later quit some months later, but that part isn’t important.
Anyway, The Art Institute of Portland is a terrible place. I wish the place would be burnt to the ground or sued for all the money they had or at least the very guy who expelled me to die a slow, horrible, agonizing death.
-Tim