It is worse then getting him a job -- here is an article about the whole deal:
OU student readmitted after threat of lawsuit
01/17/02
Ryan Chittum - Daily Staff Writer
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A student forced out of OU in September after the president of the Pakistan Student Association accused him of a hate crime is back on campus.
Chance Shipman started class Monday, but it is not yet known if he will be able to rejoin coach Jack Spates’ wrestling team.
While Chance has returned to school this semester, his friend Gary Frizzell, forced out of OU in November, has not. His father, Gary, said Frizzell decided not to come back to OU until the fall semester. The Frizzells have hired an attorney who is looking into the matter.
Frizzell’s father said he felt he should not comment except to say: “Gary is in no way guilty.”
Shipman’s readmission is a complete turnaround from the university’s stance just one month ago. The ongoing revelations about electrical engineering junior Mohammad Yaseen Haider, in jail since Nov. 8, prompted Chance to threaten a lawsuit against the university.
The lawsuit would have sought to nullify a contract Chance signed with OU the week after Haider accused him, Gary Frizzell and an unnamed student of hate crimes. Haider claimed the students beat him Sept. 16 in the racially charged aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Steve Shipman, Chance’s father, who was contacted last week, said he and his son have signed a confidentiality agreement with OU and can no longer discuss the incident. But in a December interview with The Daily, he said the university forced Chance to sign the contract in September under duress, denying him his due process rights. OU had said it would expel Chance if he did not sign the agreement.
In the contract, Chance agreed to:
• Never apply for admission or attend any campus operated by the OU Board of Regents
• Waive his right to a hearing before the Campus Disciplinary Council
• Waive his right to “confront his accuser”
• Release OU forever from any claims or losses (lawsuits)
In return, OU promised to reimburse his tuition and to keep the incident off his educational record. On the advice of his attorney and against that of his father, Chance signed the contract, believing OU had him over a barrel, Shipman said last month.
Frizzell was also forced out of OU after Haider continually complained that Frizzell had not been expelled, Shipman said. Frizzell finally left OU about one week before the Immigration and Naturalization Service arrested Haider in early November.
OU’s Public Affairs, reached Wednesday, did not comment.
An early-morning scuffle
In the days after the devastation of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the nation stood on edge — nervous about further terrorism, but also worried about the safety of Muslims and Arabs from racist retaliation.
OU seemed immune from the anti-Arab violence widely reported in the rest of the country until the early morning of Sept. 16. Just back from a fishing trip, a group of five OU students — three males, including Chance and Frizzell, both University College freshmen, and two females — drove into Norman at 2 a.m. to try to get some beer.
None of the students in the group was 21, so they tried to use a fake ID at the 7-Eleven at 12th Avenue and Robinson Street. When that failed, they went across the street to Conoco, where Haider worked (illegally, the INS said, because of his visa status) as a night clerk.
Haider (spelled Haijer in Oklahoma County Detention Center records) refused to sell Frizzell and Chance beer and told them to get out of his store. A fight ensued when Haider cursed and shoved Chance, his father said. Chance denies hitting Haider, saying he pinned him to the ground after he was shoved.
The story Haider told differed completely. In the Sept. 18 edition of The Daily, he said three white men kicked, pushed, beat and verbally abused him and then tried to run over him. He said the students said “Get out of our country” and “Don’t touch Americans again.”
Steve Shipman said his son denies he or his friends ever said anything racist. Chance, Frizzell and their three friends said Haider provoked the scuffle.
Norman police wrote Chance and Frizzell citations for misdemeanor assault and battery. They did not arrest the students.
Haider said he suffered bruises, partial loss of hearing and back pain because of the incident. He was angry but physically fine at first, but then he started wearing a neck brace and limping a couple days after the incident, according to several sources, including Lt. Glenn Dobry of the Norman Police Department.
Steve Shipman went into Haider’s Conoco shortly after the incident and asked Haider, who was then wearing a neck brace, how he got hurt.
Haider replied: “No, no. It’s just for fun,” Shipman said.
A quick decision
President David Boren met with Haider on Sept. 17, the day after the incident, and he ordered Student Affairs to investigate.
Clarke Stroud, vice president for Student Affairs, brought Chance into his office and was confrontational and accusatory, Shipman said.
The next day, Sept. 18, Boren issued a statement saying he had expelled one student (Chance) and brought charges against another (Frizzell) for violations of the student code.
But, in fact, Boren did not expel Chance, Shipman said. OU agreed to give him his money back, to keep any disciplinary action off his educational record — important since he would be seeking another college to attend — and to allow him to admit no guilt.
Shipman said the reason OU believed Haider’s testimony instead of the word of five witnesses was because of the timing — the incident happened just five days after Sept. 11, and OU did not want negative publicity.
“Boren wanted to sweep it under the rug as soon as possible,” Steve Shipman said.
Jeff Hickman, OU press secretary, in December said OU would not have taken the actions it did without having other witnesses back up Haider’s account.
But the city attorney dismissed all charges against Chance and Frizzell because witnesses said Haider followed the students out of the store and was the first to make physical contact, Lt. Dobry said.
The 7-Eleven clerk across the street from Haider’s Conoco told police that Haider was an aggressive and rude person, Dobry said. A few hours before the incident, Haider left his store and crossed the street to 7-Eleven to confront a customer who had driven there from his store. Haider yelled at the woman and called her a derogatory name.
Later in the day of the Conoco incident, Haider came to McCasland Field House where Chance was stretching with the wrestling team and began cursing, making obscene gestures and blowing kisses at Chance, Shipman said. He drove up alongside Chance and repeated his actions when the team went jogging. Dobry said Norman police had serious doubts about Haider’s account from the start.
“The Norman Police Department never approached it as a hate crime,” Dobry said. “Boren took a very aggressive response.”
Shortly after meeting with Boren, OU gave Haider a work-study job at Parkview Apartments. A person who worked with Haider at the apartments and who wished not to be identified, said Haider was a less-than-stellar worker — habitually late, refusing certain tasks and often not showing up for work. Federal agents arrest Haider
The FBI began looking at Haider a few days after the Conoco incident when it requested information about him from Norman police.
Sometime in mid-October, the government accused Haider of sending an anthrax threat to a woman he met in an Internet chat room — a woman whom he had begged to come to his apartment for the night.
She declined, and he wrote her a message that said: “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 himself tipped off authorities to his activities when he called OUDPS and the FBI on Oct. 18 and said someone had hacked into his computer and typed the message.
Three weeks later, on Nov. 8, the INS arrested Haider and his two roommates, Nabeel Khalid and Mohammad Imran Shaikh, for violating their student visas by working off-campus. The INS held Khalid and Shaikh in the Oklahoma County jail for nearly a month before releasing them.
Khalid flew home to Pakistan this week. He told a source he never should have let Haider move in with him Oct. 1. Shaikh is still in Norman.
On Dec. 13, a federal judge in Oklahoma City ordered Haider deported but he was indicted a week later for lying to the FBI. Haider confessed to Oklahoma City Police that he sent the anthrax threat.
The federal judge deemed Haider a danger to the community because he is also a suspect in multiple stalking and indecent exposure cases in Norman and because he once threatened a professor, The Daily Oklahoman reported Jan. 3. A Norman Wal-Mart banned Haider after a clerk said he was stalking her. The judge ordered him held without bail. His ex-girlfriend Cathie Lee Massoud said Haider is appealing the ruling because the police twisted her testimony during his bail hearing.
Haider now says he was coerced by Oklahoma City Police Sgt. Jerry Flowers into confessing, Massoud said. Haider also says Flowers lied in court when he testified Haider admitted he liked to dress like a woman.
Haider faces up to five years in prison.
Shipman wants to be a Sooner
Chance’s father said his son wants nothing more than to go to OU, to attend a great school and wrestle for Spates’ great program. Although he is in school, his dream to wrestle for OU is still in doubt.
His life has been delayed by at least a semester while his college and athletic careers have been put on hold. Spates said he will welcome Chance back to the program, but he doesn’t know when that will be.
“Honestly, I don’t know,” he said. “That’s an administrative thing.”
“From what little I know about Chance, he’s a good kid who hasn’t had any history of trouble.”
Unbelievable.