Once upon a time, back in the middle years of this decade, the higher ed news scene lit up with a series of cases in which graduate students were punished and threatened with expulsion for refusing to sign on to the official political belief system of their schools. There was Emily Brooker, a Missouri State social work student who sued after she refused to sign a letter to the state legislature advocating gay adoption. There was Robert Felkner, a social work student at Rhode Island College who was expelled after he refused to write essays and lobby the legislature on behalf of views he did not hold. There was Ed Swan, a Washington State education student who was punished for not having the proper “disposition” of a teacher (Swan believed in gun rights and did not subscribe to his school’s theory of white privilege). That’s not an exhaustive list, but you get the idea.

There was quite an uproar about these cases along about 2005 and 2006. The students got strong backup from FIRE and ACTA. Lawsuits were filed. Hearings were held. Missouri passed a law to protect students from the kinds of First Amendment violations Emily Brooker endured–and, after an external audit, gutted its social work program. The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) revised its standards to clarify that students could not be subjected to ideological litmus tests in the name of “social justice.”

But not everybody got the memo. From the Chronicle of Higher Ed:

A graduate student in school counseling is accusing Augusta State University in federal court of violating her constitutional rights by demanding that she work to change her views opposing homosexuality.

In a lawsuit filed on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court in Augusta, Ga., the student, Jennifer Keeton, argues that faculty members and administrators at the university have violated her First Amendment rights to free speech and the free exercise of religion by threatening her with expulsion if she does not fulfill requirements contained in a remediation plan intended to get her to change her beliefs.

[...]

Ms. Keeton is being represented by lawyers affiliated with the Alliance Defense Fund, a coalition of Christian lawyers. The group has brought a similar lawsuit on behalf of an Eastern Michigan University graduate student who alleges she was dismissed from a counseling program for her beliefs about homosexuality. In 2006 the group extracted major concessions from Missouri State University in settling a lawsuit filed by a former social-work student who refused to respect a class project’s requirement that she sign a letter to the state legislature in support of homosexual adoption.

In a news release announcing the lawsuit against Augusta State, David French, senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, said: “A public-university student shouldn’t be threatened with expulsion for being Christian and refusing to publicly renounce her faith, but that’s exactly what’s happening here. Simply put, the university is imposing thought reform.”

The lawsuit says Ms. Keeton has stated in classroom discussions and written assignments that she believes sexual behavior “is the result of accountable personal choice,” that people are born male or female, and that homosexuality is a lifestyle and not a “state of being.” It says faculty members at Augusta State confronted her about her beliefs based on such statements and on a student’s claim that Ms. Keeton has advocated “conversion therapy” for homosexuals in conversations with her peers—an allegation that Ms. Keeton denies.

The lawsuit says Augusta State faculty members developed a remediation plan specifically for Ms. Keeton and told her she would be expelled from the College of Education’s counselor-education program if she did not fulfill its requirements. The plan calls on Ms. Keeton to attend workshops on serving diverse populations, read articles on counseling gay, lesbian, and bisexual and transgendered people, and write reports to an adviser summarizing what she has learned. It also instructs her to work to increase her exposure to, and interaction with, gay populations, and suggests that she attend the local gay-pride parade. Ms. Keeton has refused to comply.

My favorite part: how the College prescribed conversion therapy to relieve a student of her heinous alleged belief in conversion therapy.

I am reminded of a scene in the classic film Roxanne. Daryl Hannah is walking naked behind a hedge, escorted by Steve Martin, who is averting his eyes.

Roxanne Kowalski: Nobody had a coat?

C.D. Bales: I thought you said you didn’t want a coat…

Roxanne Kowalski: Why would I not want a coat?

C.D. Bales: You said you didn’t want a coat!

Roxanne Kowalski: I was being ironic.

C.D. Bales: Oh, ho, ho, irony! Oh, no, no, we don’t get that here. See, uh, people ski topless here while smoking dope, so irony’s not really a, a high priority. We haven’t had any irony here since about, uh, ‘83, when I was the only practitioner of it. And I stopped because I was tired of being stared at.

Maybe one of these days schools like Augusta State will get tired of being stared at, too.