When Benjamin Refling, a transgender man, learned of the vote, he contacted college president David R. Anderson.

“I told him I did not think that the choice of a politician with such divisive views would be conducive to the spirit of commencement, which should be a celebration of all the diverse talents and experiences of the class of ’09,” Refling said. “And that many LGBT students would be alienated by Paulsen’s refusal to support the recent hate crimes bill.”

The hate crimes bill, which passed the U.S. House, would add sexual orientation and gender identity to U.S. hate crimes law, which currently only covers crimes on the basis of race, color, religion or national origin.

The religious right, including Paulsen’s colleague Rep. Michele Bachmann, has argued against such inclusions by conflating sexual orientation with crimes such as pedophilia. James Dobson, the former head of Focus on the Family, lent his organization’s support to Paulsen in a letter to voters last fall.

Refling said he wasn’t expecting the college to cancel Paulsen’s speech but rather to issue an understanding response; that wasn’t what he got. “[Anderson] wrote to me that any commencement speaker would have to offend someone in the audience, and essentially, it was my bad luck that I just happened to be that ’1 out of 5,000.’”

So Refling posted the exchange to his Facebook page and found that many students shared his concerns.

“The issue of LGBT rights is a sensitive one to St. Olaf students, some of whom have known victims of anti-LGBT violence in addition to being allies themselves, and the discussion that followed seems to have swept the entire campus,” he said.

The students are holding a demonstration by pinning gold ribbons to their graduation gowns as a symbol of inclusion. They also sent an email to the entire campus urging others to support the gold ribbon campaign. They wrote:

Inclusiveness is a definitive value at our institution. It guides St. Olaf through divisiveness and keeps our community relevant, diverse and cohesive. This year the commencement speaker, Representative Erik Paulsen ’87 (R-MN), is a member of our St. Olaf family, and brings his own unique voice to local and national politics. His beliefs are not singularly representative of St. Olaf, but rather constitute one part of the sum of our diverse family. While we welcome his voice, a group of St. Olaf students with their own voices do not share his views on many social issues.

Just as Erik Paulsen will share his viewpoint at commencement, those in the St. Olaf community who respectfully disagree with Representative Paulsen will also express themselves. A group of students from all different backgrounds have organized and is proposing the following, under the theme: “Celebrating the Class of 2009 as They Are – Created Equally.

Paulsen’s office didn’t respond to a weekend request for comment, but Refling said that another student contacted the office and was told the commencement address would not be political in nature.

Wade Hauser, president of student government, said he didn’t think the college would change the speaker. “Paulsen was picked quite a while ago,” he said. “Some people were unhappy with that, but he’s an alum and I think people understood.”

“More recently, because of that specific vote, people have started paying attention to his past record.”

Hauser said it could be an effective demonstration. “I wouldn’t be surprised if that took off,” he said, referring to the golden ribbons.

The commencement controversy comes at the same time President Obama’s commencement at Notre Dame University drew anti-abortion protesters resulting in nearly 40 arrests.

Minnesota Independent reporter Chris Steller contributed to this report.

Obama and Paulsen have this in common: Both got big promotions this year after winning election to higher office.

But while Obama is left to play off the diss from ASU and duck for cover at Notre Dame, Paulsen can count on a carefree reception in Northfield on May 24.

Last week, St. Olaf spokesman David Gonnerman told MnIndy that the campus didn’t seem riled enough by abortion or any other issue to generate protests against this year’s commencement speaker — and never has been, that he can recall. UPDATED: In a late development, there is a student protest in the works. (See followup post: “Rep. Paulsen faces opposition at St. Olaf commencement.”) 

As for a degree from St. Olaf, Paulsen (Class of ’87) already has his. UPDATED: Gonnerman confirms he won’t be getting another. 

Might Obama have a controversy-free campus visit when he commissions this year’s officer class May 22 at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.? Don’t ask.

SaveWCAL asserts that St. Olaf College’s $10.5 million sale of the former WCAL-FM wasn’t legal. The argument: For more than 80 years, the station was a charitable trust, meaning the college needed approval from its listener-members and a court to close such a deal. 

Northfield’s dirty laundry got aired this way in the WSJ: 

“St. Olaf has looted the assets they were charged with protecting,” St. Olaf alumna Ruth Sylte, the president of SaveWCAL, says. “Donors everywhere should be worried.”

Steven Blodgett, a St. Olaf administrator, says opponents are “harassing the college” with their court fight. “Everybody wants to just move on,” he says.

Like Coleman, SaveWCAL filed a notice of appeal at the beginning of the week. Unlike Coleman, the group took the next step today, filing its actual appeal brief at the state Court of Appeals. St. Olaf and MPR have 30 days to file their responses.

Overexuberant support for Gov. Tim Pawlenty has come back to bite a major Minnesota company — for a second time. First, an executive with Piper Jaffray, Minnesota’s top municipal bond underwriter, gave too much money to the state’s top elected official. Then the firm did not abide by its penalty — an industry-imposed ban on bond deals with state agencies — and now faces another round of punishment.

After an initial donation of $200 in 2005, two more $250 checks from Addison “Tad” Piper (pictured), then Piper Jaffray’s vice chairman, to Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s reelection campaign earned the firm a two-year ban on underwriting bonds for state agencies. (A well-known industry rule limits such donations to $250 annually.) As the industry’s top self-regulation officer put it to the Star Tribune at the time, “You’re screwed for two years.”

Now the firm is in trouble again for two much bigger checks it earned on bond deals that violated that ban. The Bond Buyer reports that the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) socked Piper Jaffray with a $25,000 fine Thursday and ordered the firm to disgorge (return) profits of more than 10 times that amount from those deals. (Under the terms of the sanction, Piper Jaffray officially neither admitted nor denied violating the ban.)

FINRA wasn’t specific, but at least one of the two underwriting deals was with the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency for $167,316, the Bond Buyer deduced.

Which agency was involved in the other ban-breaking bond is more of a mystery. One that can apparently be ruled out is the St. Paul Port Authority’s $11.5 million financing for Minnesota Public Radio’s purchase of WCAL-FM from St. Olaf College, the station that became The Current. The timing in 2005 is right, Tad Piper served on the boards of both MPR and St. Olaf, and Piper Jaffray was said to be lined up to do the underwriting. But the Allied Irish Bank ended up as underwriter, and that’s probably just as well for Piper Jaffray, which stood to be thrice-bitten: an investigator’s report released in March raised the chances that MPR’s purchase of WCAL could yet come undone.