A student bondage and sadomasochism club met Monday for the first time after a university suspension was lifted in the wake of assault charges.

The group, Cuffs, met Monday night in the Gold Room of the Memorial Union with 11 members in attendance.

It wasn’t a normal meeting for the group, said Treasurer Amber Troxell, sophomore in apparel merchandising, design and production.

“It was more of a catch-up meeting … [it] isn’t a regular meeting because it was all about legal stuff and the investigation,” Troxell said.

The university charged Cuffs with assault following an investigation into a meeting last fall when a clothed group member volunteered to participate in a demonstration of the proper use of sex toys.

Cuffs president Harlan “Duane” Long Jr. ran the meeting, giving a one-hour presentation on the history of S&M and the way laws have been used to discriminate against BDSM activities and their practitioners.

“A normal meeting would have been one about tying knots. It would have been more instructional — more telling you how to do a procedure,” Troxell said.

She said she was appreciative of the university lifting the interim ban on the organization.

“It’s taken them too long to conduct their interview, and it’s been too long since we’ve met,” Troxell said. “I think it’s unfortunate that we’ve been targeted.”

However, she said it wasn’t “a huge catastrophe” for the group to not be able to physically meet while the Office of Judicial Affairs conducted its investigation because the group members stayed in contact via e-mail.

“It was unnecessary, and I think if they would have taken time to look at what happened, the investigation wouldn’t have taken so long,” Troxell said.

Bethany Schuttinga, director of judicial affairs, conducted the investigation. She said the investigation was not drawn out or meant to be discriminatory.

“I don’t feel we have discriminated against Cuffs. We looked at an issue that was brought to our attention,” Schuttinga said in a Feb. 16 meeting with Long to discuss charges. “It takes time to learn about the scope of the subject matter at hand and the complexity of the issue that has been raised. At the beginning of the investigation, I was not informed of the BDSM community, and it has taken time for me to learn about the community and the issues associated.”

Troxell said she doesn’t understand how the university didn’t assume Cuffs would perform demonstrations.

“When you’re teaching about it, you’re most likely going to have a demonstration to show the audience to have them learn better,” she said.