What was a one year ban for the Muslim Student Union at UC Irvine was reduced to being forbidden to participate in campus activities for one quarter.

They should have been kicked off campus.

The ostensible reason for the ban was their disruption of Israeli ambassador Michael Oren's speech on campus last year. But in truth, their "Anti-Israeli Apartheid" week should disqualify them from doing anything except meeting with the neo-Nazis whose views they emulate.

But the UC administrators don't quite see it that way:

The group has maintained that it did not organize the protest, though several of its officers and members participated in the protest, in which Oren was repeatedly interrupted as he spoke.

In maintaining the suspension, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Manuel Gomez focused mostly on the participation of members of the organization in the protest rather than a lengthy set of e-mails that was used as evidence in the initial investigation by the university's director of student housing.

The e-mails, which the school said it obtained anonymously, showed that the Muslim Student Union "planned, orchestrated and coordinated" the protest, school administrators had said in the previous suspension letter.

"The public actions of [blacked out] give the appearance of MSU sponsorship to these serious violations of campus policies and First Amendment protections," Gomez wrote this week in his letter to the group. "And because the violations occurred on campus ... the perception of MSU endorsement is especially difficult to overcome."

In other words, the UC administrators are sending the message that you can lie through your teeth to school authorities and get off with only a slap on the wrist. The protest was pre-planned by the chairman of the MSU and did not involve anyone except MSU members. To try and plead ignorance of the provenance and nature of the protest was an outrageous lie - a fact that the authorities acknowledged but did not punish the MSU for.

The administration also has no plans to cancel next year's "Anti-Israel Apartheid" week which goes to show how serious they are about "diversity" and multi-cultural sensitivities.