A diversity trainer created more dissension than harmony at Wilkes University this month, thanks to an event for student leaders that featured intentional racial slurs, according to an article in Diverse: Issues in Higher Education. The trainer, Ron Feldhun, said that he’d used the offensive terms, and had some of the students do the same, in order to remove the sting from words like “chink.”

Despite his efforts, the terms retain their sting. But the concept cost his boss—the Pennsylvania institution’s multicultural-affairs coordinator—her job. The article quotes the trainer as saying that Wilkes was looking for an excuse to be rid of the coordinator, Andita Parker-Lloyd, because her legal fight against the city of Wilkes-Barre, Pa., over a traffic stop was an embarrassment. A university spokesman said the dismissal had nothing to do with the lawsuit.