Citrus College in California has placed a speech instructor on administrative leave for allegedly offering students extra credit in return for writing letters to President Bush opposing the war with Iraq.

Two students made complaints when they met with Samuel Lee, associate dean of language arts, to express their discontent. After the complaints were made, Lee sent a memorandum to instructor Rosalyn Kahn to clearly outline university policies regarding political activism and favoritism in the classroom. In this e-mail, Lee stated that both of these actions are prohibited.

Kahn immediately denied all allegations and has yet to publicly confess to any of them, according to Lee.

“A terrible wrong has been done to me and to the teaching profession,” Kahn said in a recent statement. “Students were allowed to communicate any view. At no point were students directed to adopt any particular position.”

Lee said that, after meeting with the class and talking with Kahn on other occasions, it seemed more likely that some of the accusations could be true.

He also said that the situation appeared to be an abuse of power on Kahn’s part.

Kahn was hired this semester to teach Speech 106 at the Citrus, a community college near Los Angeles. This course is mandatory for students looking to transfer into the California State University or the University of California system.

Students taking this course also mentioned similar writing assignments earlier in the semester for which extra credit was offered. One student recalled writing a letter to state Sen. Jake Scott, D-Pasadena, in the past for which he received credit. Apparently the letters written to Scott had been delivered, and the antiwar messages addressed to Bush were mailed.

One student said he took his letter back after finding out it would be sent to Bush and, in turn, sacrificed the extra credit that he allegedly would have been awarded.

After Lee’s meeting with the students in this class, a decision was made to void any previous extra credit awarded and to offer all students the opportunity to resubmit letters, which could express any political view and would yield essentially the same reward.

Before university officials came to this conclusion, students were asked to respond to a list of 12 detailed questions in reaction to the allegations made earlier this month regarding extra credit and other issues.

In addition, Citrus College president and superintendent Dr. Louis E. Zellers sent a letter to President Bush apologizing and asking that the students’ letters be retracted since they were collected in an inappropriate manner.

“The school handled it quite well … in a very fast and thorough way,” Lee said. “We are working to protect instructors’ and students’ rights to express feelings freely in a classroom without benefiting.”