Complaints about alleged race discrimination by a Chicago bar against six black Washington University students have prompted state and federal investigations and a likely lawsuit to be filed by the students against the bar.

The developments came in the week after the incident, which occurred during a senior class trip night out at the Original Mothers bar in a popular nightspot downtown. Senior Class Council had made prior arrangements with the bar for some 200 seniors to go there.

The investigations, which include an FBI inquiry, are a result of complaints filed by Regis Murayi, one of the students denied entry into the bar on Oct. 17. Murayi, treasurer of Senior Class Council, filed complaints with the Chicago Commission on Human Rights, the Illinois attorney general’s office and the U.S. Department of Justice.

In the complaints, Murayi alleged that the bar’s refusal to admit the students constituted discrimination under the Chicago Municipal Code, which prohibits places of public accommodations from discriminating against clientele based on race. Race discrimination is also a federal offense under Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Murayi said the manager of Mothers told him and the other students that they could not enter the bar because they were violating the bar’s ban on baggy jeans. But Murayi said the manager admitted white students wearing baggy jeans. To prove this, Murayi changed jeans with senior Jordan Roberts, a white student, and Roberts was then admitted into the bar wearing the jeans.

Murayi said he thinks the six were discriminated against not because of their jeans but because they were a large group of black men.

“The bar racially discriminated against us and automatically assumed that we were dangerous,” Murayi said.

Representatives from Mothers declined to be interviewed this weekend by Student Life but said in a news release that the bar “does not discriminate against guests or patrons on the basis of race, and would never tolerate discriminatory conduct.” Mothers said it is conducting an investigation into the case and will take disciplinary action if necessary.

You can learn from science fiction.

Fellow nerds out there already know this - or at least believe this - and I have a concrete example for you today.

The Los Angeles Times the other day ran a story about a local lawyer who wrote an article critical of something called Confederate History Month and then got hit with personal attacks on the Internet by people who had learned all sorts of things about her on that same Internet.

The Internet waters are dangerous. There are sharks out there.

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Jeremy Jordan wrote his letter from the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem on college-ruled paper, using the neat penmanship and careful paragraphs of a person with time for multiple drafts.

Jordan, 32, has about five years left in prison for hitting a bicyclist last spring in Northeast Portland after a Friday night out drinking. Though Jordan accepts responsibility for the hit-and-run crash, he also raises a haunting question:

What if Multnomah County had taken seriously his first arrest in 2004 for drunken driving, rather than giving him a stern look and a wink?

"Had that occurred, it's very possible I wouldn't be in prison," Jordan wrote, in response to a recent column about Oregon's inconsistent attitude toward drunken driving. "I hope more ... measures will be taken to prevent future lives from being ruined."

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When the Scottish government released Abdel Baset al-Megrahi Thursday, it forced the world into a philosophical debate about justice, vengeance, compassion and evil.

Al-Megrahi, 57, is the only man convicted in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. He has prostate cancer, and doctors have given him only three months to live. He was released after serving eight years of a life sentence.

In his letter asking the Scottish government to release him because of his illness, the former Libyan intelligence officer said he had "behaved with respect to the due legal process which I am subjected to."

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With irritating frequency, national news anchors and members of Congress are using a cool new phrase they must have just invented themselves: "The Chicago Way."

They talk like this even though President Barack Obama of Chicago continues to demand that citizens stand up and fight political corruption, just as long as they're citizens of Africa.

He did so during his campaign, complaining that Africans felt numbed and powerless by corruption. Visiting Africa a few weeks ago and without a hint of irony, Obama struck again, saying that Africans hoping to open a business or get a job surely must feel as if they "still have to pay a bribe."

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