Unlike other posts, this post is NOT G-rated. The Factor will comply with wishes of privacy by withholding any specific information about the accusers unless necessary for objectivity or analysis. --GPO

The Arizona Daily Wildcat reports that two ASUA associates have accused ASUA President Cade Bernsen of sexual harassment over a period of eight months.

Article VI, Section 2 of the ASUA Constitution states that "Violations of the Constitution or Bylaws, nonfeasance and/or malfeasance in office shall constitute grounds for impeachment." Removal from office requires a 3/4 vote in the senate. If the elected official involved is a Senator, she may have to recuse herself in order to allow a fair vote. Here's hoping Bernsen resigns if the allegations are true so we don't have to go through this.

This is not the first time that an ASUA official has received trouble over a sexual issue. In April 2004, the ASU State Press reported that ASA officials had attended a strip club off student money. The ASA Director from the University of Arizona at that time had been Alistair Chapman, who later went on to become Student Body President. The Wildcat never reported it.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Alistair Chapman has personally clarified the strip club incident. In fact, he was trying to prevent future incidents!

Second Update: An anonymous commenter correctly notes that only a simple majority of the "total voting membership" of the Senate is required to impeach Bernsen.

Rev. George Coyne of the UA-affiliated Vatican Observatory is again in the news after publicly stating that 'intelligent design' is not science, and thus belongs in religion and cultural history classes. The comments come about a month-and-a-half after Coyne rebuffed Cardinal Christoph Shonborn, archbishop of Vienna, for having rejected "evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense."

Just to clarify the issue to evolutionists, the notion of "intelligent design" doesn't necessarily entail a six-day creation; it means that somebody intelligent (namely God), designed creation. There's nothing revolutionary or anti-evolution about that concept. As has been repeated several times, believing that this all came about without God, regardless of how He did it is like expecting two cars to be improved by a fender bender.

I'm not a scientist, so I'm not about to debate six-day creation vs. evolution. But is it reasonable to expect such complexity of life without a Creator?

As for the education issue, Rings of Benzene and Cafe Hayek speak for me.

In the midst of UA professor Robert A. Williams' resignation from the committee investigating the academic integrity of CU professor Ward Churchill, an archived version of the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program news page (under UA's Rogers College of Law) reveals that Ward Churchill spoke at the University of Arizona on September 2 and 3 of 2004.

This comes in addition to current claims that Williams praised Churchill's scholarship. The claim is sourced at a page on CensoringThought.org, which appears to have gained the quote from elsewhere without citation.

Update I: PirateBallerina, the leading anti-Churchill blog which broke the Williams connection, has kindly linked to the Factor. He reports that Williams is the co-chair of the IPLP (the dept. that invited Churchill last year), but I rechecked Williams' page. According to it, he's the director of the IPLP. I've emailed PirateBallerina about it, so stand by.

Update II: PirateBallerina pointed out to me via email that Williams was co-chair at the time of the Churchill invitation according to an archived page on the IPLP website. Keep checking his blog in the meantime; we could see more resignations soon.