Conrad Tillard, as he was known in his pre-ministerial days, was a student at the University of Pennsylvania from 1986 through 1988, when he left without receiving a diploma to become the national youth representative for the Nation of Islam, a post Farrakhan created for him.

While at Penn, Muhammad split the Black community on campus by forming the Organization of Black Consciousness, challenging the already-existing Black Student League.

While in Philadelphia, Muhammad frequently addressed audiences using inflammatory and racist rhetoric, calling white people at one time," the blue-eyed devil," another time, "the enemy of humanity" and still another time, the "killer" who creates an "unseen reality" that manipulates Blacks to commit violent acts against each other.

In his introduction of Farrakhan's 1988 address at Penn, Muhammad called the Nation of Islam leader "My God." Is this the kind of role model you'd want a healer of racial wounds to bring to Sanders Theatre?

With information like this readily available, there was no excuse for Foundation money to have been anywhere near Conrad Muhammad two weeks ago. This man's job for the past four years has been to travel from campus to campus advocating the separation of races, a doctrine directly in conflict with the Foundation's goals.

The Foundation's Student Advisory Committee owes this campus an explanation of its self-defeating and irresponsible decision. And it has to come up with something better than the separating-the-person-from-the-topic argument which could be used to justify Foundation funding of an Adolf Hitler address on homosexuality.

Expecting such and individual to limit his comments to the contribution of rap music to culture is naive at best. Even if SAC had no clue of Muhammad's past racist comments, funding a Nation of Islam speaker does anything but follow the Foundation's motto to "enhance the quality of our common life."