Someone is still lying, and ISU President Gregory Geoffroy doesn’t care.

Graduate student Jay Gardner was removed from a journalism class on ethnicity and gender in the spring semester at the request of the assistant professor teaching the class, Tracey Owens-Patton.

Among other complaints and reasons for removing Gardner from her class, Owens-Patton told university administrators that a sergeant with the Department of Public Safety told her that Gardner was a member of a white supremacist group. She claimed campus police offered to place officers outside her class room for her protection.

But when asked, Sgt. Gene Deisinger has said he knows of no white supremacist groups on campus, though he has declined to say what, if anything, he told Owens-Patton.

This situation clearly represents a fundamental problem. Someone is lying.

As part of the reason to get him kicked out of her class, Owens-Patton told administrators that the police told her Gardner was a member of a white supremacist group. The police have said that the group he allegedly belonged to doesn’t exist. Either Owens-Patton lied to the administrators, or Deisinger is lying now.

This is a problem because this university is either employing a professor who would make up dire police warnings to put the screws on a student whose opinions she dislikes or a police sergeant who will lie through his teeth about matters of public interest and safety. That fact will not go away. It has to be one or the other and neither is appealing.

Understandably, neither the campus police or Owens-Patton has made any move to clear this up. I’m sure both parties would prefer this stand-off of fact be swept under the porch and forgotten. Apparently Geoffroy feels the same way.

It is reported in today’s Daily that the ISU president has decided he will not review Gardner’s appeal of his removal. Geoffroy declined to investigate the charges of racism leveled against Gardner because his personal beliefs were not the reason he was kicked out of the class.

That may be, but what about the obvious dichotomy between what Owens-Patton and Deisinger have publicly said? Why is Geoffroy ignoring this? Simply because it’s easier to do so than to find out the truth?

This is disappointing behavior from a president who has until now dealt wisely and openly with the university’s struggles and missteps. He has called for a review of private gift accounts in response to the declining trust in the ISU Foundation. He has kept furloughs and firings off the table while dealing with the budget crisis.

The Gardner situation is a different type of challenge, one that calls more for a display of conscience and integrity than of sensitivity or statesmanship.

Someone is still lying. Geoffroy should care.

Editorial Board: Dave Roepke, Erin Randolph, Charlie Weaver, Megan Hinds, Rachel Faber Machacha