Devoted followers of campus politics will recall the uproar that took place this time last year at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The occasion: the school's freshman reading program, an adjunct to freshman orientation in which each incoming student reads an assigned book over the summer and then, on a designated day during on-campus orientation, discusses the book in a small group led by a UNC professor. The problem: UNC's chosen book last year, Michael Sells' Approaching the Qu'ran: The Early Revelations, rubbed a few too many people the wrong way. On behalf of outraged students and parents, the Family Policy Network, a conservative Christian group, filed suit against the school, claiming that in requiring students to read portions of the Koran, UNC was violating their religious freedom and attempting to indoctrinate them. Outraged pundits used the suit as an opportunity to pontificate about the school's liberal bias. The school was surprised and embarrassed. The court upheld the school. The offended students did not have to read the book. The reading program went ahead as planned.

This year, it's happening again. UNC assigned Barbara Ehrenreich's bestselling expose of the lives of America's lowest paid workers, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. Ehrenreich's book tells the harrowing story of her own undercover three-month stints as a waitress in Florida, a maid in Maine, and a Wal-Mart worker in Minnesota. Beautifully written and told from a compelling first-person perspective (a few excerpts are here), the book has worked well at other schools--among them Siena College in New York, Fairfield University in Connecticut, Southern Oregon University, the University of California-Riverside, Ohio State, Indiana State, Lehigh University and Ball State University. Nearby Appalachian State and UNC-Asheville are using it this year, with no fuss.

But at UNC, the precedent of protest has been set, and this year a new group of conservative students and lawmakers stepped forward to complain about UNC's liberal bias. Ehrenreich, they argued, is a leftist (as if her politics automatically invalidated her book). Her book is sacreligious (she refers to Jesus as a "wine-guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist" at one point). She has bad things to say about capitalism (like that minimum-wage workers can't make ends meet unless they work multiple jobs). And she is too hard on Wal-Mart (Wal-Mart workers may not be able to pay their rent, but they should remember that Wal-Mart's business model is highly respected and that Wal-Mart is a force for good).

The sniping back and forth has been going on for weeks. Conservative students and opportunistic state legislators complain about the ideological bias that is institutionalized at UNC, holding press conferences and taking out costly newspaper ads in which they call the book a "Marxist rant." Defenders of UNC's choice of book point out that the school isn't planning to teach the book as true, but rather wants to use it to launch spirited discussion about an issue that will be new to many students. They note that the point of educated inquiry is to read all sorts of things written from all manner of perspectives--even ones the reader disagrees with. Ehrenreich herself has gotten involved in the fray, defending her honor in The Progressive and granting numerous interviews to local media outlets (here's one in the Herald-Sun).

So far, it's been the usual type of battle with the usual sorts of players and the usual sorts of arguments. But in recent days things have begun to get a bit more interesting.

The UNC-Chapel Hill housekeeping staff has become involved. After weeks of watching the well-heeled ideologues they clean up after arguing about whether the book tells any kind of truth and whether it has any legitimate bearing on life at Chapel Hill, a group of campus groundskeepers and janitors have decided to hold their own teach in. Citing the authority of their own underpaid experience (most fulltime house- and groundskeeping staff at UNC make a bit less than $20,000 per year), they have invited--or challenged--the faculty who benefit from their services and the administrators who don't pay them adequately to attend.

And now--because we are entering the farcical stage of this historical repetition--there is a chance for everyone to weigh in. The Charlotte Observer is calling on conservatives to stop the whining and start the constructive criticism:

Here's a suggestion to prevent a similar political squabble next summer: Why not invite conservatives who have objected to UNC's choices to suggest books they consider appropriate?

Sure, Anne Coulter's "Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism" might be a bit tough for Chapel Hill to chew on, but social and political conservatives have written many thoughtful books about America, international relations and global challenges that might prompt rewarding discussions among new students and UNC professors.

So here's your chance, conservatives. Send us the titles of books you think incoming UNC students should read, and we'll share them with Observer readers and with Chancellor James Moeser. Send your suggestions to Right Books, Editorial Department, The Charlotte Observer, P.O. Box 30308, Charlotte, N.C. 28230-0308 or editorialmail@charlotteobserver.com. In a couple of weeks we'll publish the conservative reading list and forward it to Chancellor Moeser.

Thanks to reader Fred R. for various links.