Who's suing whom?

We received a summary document on the faculty list today from the Faculty Association. Included were two real gems.

Named as defendants were the State of Minnesota, MnSCU and the MnSCU Board, SCSU, ... The Inter-Faculty Organization was named by the court as a "Defendant-Indispensable Party" because of our contract with MnSCU.

The IFO had little influence on the settlement. The IFO was legally combined with the defendants, but was morally allied with the plaintiffs as faculty who alleged unfair discrimination (and who were not receiving resolution of their complaints and grievances). Throughout the discussions, the IFO attempted to use its influence to get a fair outcome for all faculty and for the University.

So we have a case where the IFO gets itself listed as a defendant but wants to be the plaintiff. Some lawyer should tell me how the hell that works. Are they given permission to hear defense strategy? If so, and if they are "morally allied with the plaintiffs", doesn't that participation in the defense cause the defense to be compromised? I teach law and economics once in a blue moon, but these procedural matters are far out of my ken.

But the next is worse:

SCSU must implement mandatory diversity training (including anti-Semitism) for all faculty and administrators. Mandatory training was not introduced by the plaintiffs, nor by the IFO, but by the main defendants, i.e. administrators and attorneys of MnSCU and SCSU. (Emphasis added.)

Other than trying to save the university money, I cannot understand this except that the university seems to want mandatory training. As Instapundit notes, this seldom works as well as just making them pay. And if it was to save money, it didn't work.