It's a common school practice to get students involved in political campaigns for school credit - the underlying idea being that the experience gained is more important than the particular candidate supported - since the schools, which are either government institutions or private non-profit entities, can't overtly support one candidate over the other(s).
As I mentioned previously, Richard Roberts (Oral Roberts' son) is apparently in a bit of controversy. One of the items in question is an allegation that Oral Roberts University (ORU) students supported one candidate (Randi Miller) and did not support other candidates such as Chris Medlock. Specifically:
[T]he law firm where [Bill LaFortune] works is defending ORU in a lawsuit brought by three former professors. That suit claims, among other things, that Roberts ordered government professor Tim Brooker to use his students in the mayoral campaign of Randi Miller.
Miller, a county commissioner, was running against LaFortune in the GOP primary....
Roberts said he did not tell Brooker to have his students work in the Miller campaign. He said Brooker's students worked in local campaigns, including for Miller, Mayor Kathy Taylor and Medlock.
"We want our students to get field experience, This is not anything new," Roberts said.
In response to the claim that Oral Roberts University students did not single out any one candidate for special treatment, Chris Medlock replies:
I can state categorically the sum total of the volunteer contribution to my campaign for mayor that came from Prof. Tim Brooker's team of students adds to a couple of hours, on a Saturday afternoon, by a single female student who brought her mother and father with her, to throw Tulsa Beacons that included an ad advocating my candidacy....
They left campaign headquarters in the early afternoon and returned a few hours later. Most of the teams were finishing their routes in less than an hour and a half. When the student returned with her father, she wanted someone from the campaign to sign a note telling Brooker that she had logged time working on the Medlock campaign. I signed it for her....
We immediately wrote her off as an attempt by the university to try to cover their keesters with the IRS and were reasonably sure that we would never see her again. We didn't.
Meanwhile, Chris Medlock was mentioned in connection to Mailgate or whatever they call it in Tulsa:
Ethical questions are swirling around former city councilor Chris Medlock and his nearly yearlong receipt of council e-mails that were intended for his successor, Rick Westcott....
The e-mail situation was detected after a council aide sent an e-mail with an attachment to Westcott's District 2 council e-mail address and then received a notice that the file was too big and could not be delivered to Medlock's personal e-mail address.
That triggered council staff to look into how Medlock got that e-mail.
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