Headdress Issue: Marquette Bureaucrat Exceeded His Authority

It’s now all over the Milwaukee media, how Assistant Vice President James McMahon summoned Marquette student Dan O’Connell into his office and ordered him not to wear an Indian headdress to tonight’s game at the Bradley Center, on pain of being tossed out of the place and having his headdress confiscated.

One naturally wonders: just what gives McMahon the authority to threaten a student with such an action?

We got McMahon on the phone earlier today, and he refused to discuss the issue at all, referring us to Brigid Miller. But Miller has failed to respond to either an e-mail of ours, or a voice mail we left her.

But she talked to WTMJ Radio. A story on that station’s web site quotes her.

University spokeswoman Brigid O’Brien-Miller says the University doesn’t specifically ban Indian clothing from games. But she says the school wants to make sure that everyone is educated about Native American imagery. “As a University we have a policy that says we will educate fans about our views about wearing that type of thing in the context of athletics. That’s exactly what this conversation was, educating and discussing and we regularly do that,” O’Brien-Miller said.

A bizarre statement.

McMahon didn’t try to “educate” O’Connell. He threatened the student.

And given the lack of any rule against what the student was doing, he was exceeding his authority.

Thus does political correctness on Marquette’s campus increasingly resemble fascism. It’s not just that arbitrary and unfair rules are being laid down. It’s that University bureaucrats don’t feel they need to bother with rules when they are enforcing the politically correct orthodoxy.