In the course, offered last spring, the 15 or so students were divided into four teams and told to come up with a campaign to pitch to Coach representatives, who subsequently visited the class. Portlock says the Coach contingent chose a combination of two of the pitches: the fictional student and another pitch with the tagline, "Break the chain," about ending the cycle of counterfeiting -- a concept Cee professes to come up with on her blog.

In a written statement to Adweek, a Coach representative says the Coach employees "viewed the different campaign pitches from the students and gave their feedback" and that "students and professors then regrouped and decided which campaign to develop."

The class had been put on the schedule without the customary departmental review. But over champagne at a department meeting at the end of the term, Roman toasted Portlock for teaching it.

Post- toast, says Portlock, "I knew a lot of hell would break loose about the class. And it did."

Failing Grades

Stuart Ewen, a former chairman of the Hunter film and media studies department and the author of PR! -- A Social History of Spin, wasn't at that meeting, but heard about it soon enough and started to investigate.

"It was a course sponsored by an outside corporation and basically course material had been provided to the instructor by an outside trade organization that the sponsor, Coach, was a member of," Ewen says. "The course was unequivocally designed to further the interests of the company and the organization."

Ewen says he recently filed a complaint with the college senate's academic freedom committee, which is investigating.

"This thing is a staggering event," Ewen says. "It may be unprecedented in the history of American universities that paid-for curricula is coerced on faculty members."

Ewen gave a presentation about the course at a conference in New York in February, "Where the Truth Lies: A Symposium on Propaganda Today," which created some interest from blogs and watchdogs.