Penn State President Graham Spanier sought out and submitted all instances of student complaints of bias in the classroom over the past five years, upon the request of state Rep. Tom Stevenson's, R-Allegheny. The complaints totaled 13, and all were resolved.

Twelve of the complaints were received at University Park over the five-year span, and one occurred at Penn State Abington College.

The only college to receive multiple complaints was the College of Health and Human Development. Two of the three complaints in that college were filed against the human development and family studies (HDFS) department.

In one case, a Muslim student at the Abington campus accused a Jewish political science professor of being anti-Muslim. The student distributed the list of complaints to fellow students and picketed.

The division head discussed the situation with the student and professor. In the end, the Office of Academic Affairs found the complaint invalid.

In another instance, a student claimed that an HDFS professor was limiting the discussion in class to a conservative viewpoint on family structure. The department head met with the professor, who said he did not take a political stance on the discussion. The department head decided the student missed the point of the discussion, said Vice Provost for Academic Affairs Blannie Bowen.

Spanier contacted Bowen last semester to fulfill Stevenson's request. Bowen then contacted the campus deans of all the colleges to determine the number of complaints in each. The department heads were contacted next, and finally, Bowen compiled all the information.

Stevenson asked for a copy of the university's principles regarding student academic freedom, policies on how to resolve such complaints and procedures dealing with the complaints.

He also requested the nature of each complaint, the action being taken in response to it and the means to determine the validity of the complaint.

Bowen said that when a complaint is filed, the first line of action is for the student to approach the faculty member directly. If the problem remains unsolved, it goes to the department head and eventually to the dean of the college.

Shauna Moser, chairwoman of Young Americans for Freedom, said the problem lies in the difficulty of filing complaints.

"There's a step-by-step process that's a pain in the butt," she said. "If the university would make it a little easier to file a complaint, we would do it."

Bowen said he does not feel that 13 complaints in five years indicate a big problem.

He pointed out that Penn State has 177,457 sections of courses over five years and has roughly 8,000 faculty members and 80,000 students at all of its campuses, excluding the Pennsylvania College of Technology. At 30 students per class, that adds up to about 40,000 complaints that could have been made against each professor.

"To have so few complaints over a five-year period is remarkable," Bowen said.

Michael Berubé, president of the American Association of University Professors, shared a similar viewpoint with Bowen over the non-severity of the issue.

"Really, if you do the math over all the courses and all the students over University Park, 13 complaints is a pretty good customer response ratio," he said.

Berubé will be speaking about Academic Freedom at 3 p.m. today in Foster Auditorium.