Recently, we reported on a  group of Brown University students who organized an on-campus workshop in which “queer” participants were to separate by race to “work past their sexual attraction to Caucasian.”

After intense social media scrutiny, the event Facebook page was taken down.

Now, Timothy Dionisopoulos of Campus Reform offers a defense of that workshop by one of the organizers:

An organizer of a workshop for “queer” minorities scheduled at Brown University next week, defended plans to segregate participants by race, following a Campus Reform report that brought national media attention to the event.

In a Facebook thread from March 20th, organizer Drew Heckman wondered why the segregation aspect had ignited such a firestorm.

“To be clear, we did not ask for national attention, but it is interesting to ponder why we achieved it,” he commented. “Is it the ‘segregation’ that appalls you/The Daily Caller/Campus Reform? The intentional and voluntary division into identity groups at our event?”

Campus Reform reported on March 19, that the event entitled, “Protect Me From What I Want: A Workshop on Privilege, Desire, and Power,” which will be hosted on campus at Brown on April 8, would ask that its participants break into race-based groups.

“We will break into POC [people of color] and White caucus groups for a part of the workshop to unpack some of our specific experiences of racialized desire,” read the event description. “This will be an intentional, anti-racist, and feminist space.”

Since that report, however, a link to the original event page for the workshop has been disabled for anyone outside the Brown University network.

Campus Reform learned of the updates after an anonymous student sent screen shots of the Facebook page.

In a recent Facebook post on the event page from Sunday afternoon, Heckman stated this is now a private event to Brown and Rhode Island School of Design students.

“Hi all, quick update—due to some administrators concerns, this event will be Brown-RISD students and their guests only” said Heckman.

Heckman instructed non-students to email the [email protected] for more information, but stated “…please understand that you may not be admitted to the event if you are a not a student and have not contacted us beforehand.”

Kelly Garrett, Coordinator for the Brown University LGBTQ Resource Center, did not respond to requests comment from Campus Reform.