"The Rhyme of the Ancient Camellier,"

the Camel Club composed a poem, "The Rhyme of the Ancient Camellier," with the apparent purpose of humiliating Assaad. It begins:

"Ayaad Assaad was the start,
with a reputation for not having heart
A 'skimmer' without equal
We hope there's no sequel
In his honor we created this beast
It represents life lower than yeast
Whoever is voted this sucker,
you can't duck her, You must accept blame,
And bear all the shame Unlike Assaad,
that first motherfucker"

The poem continues for five typewritten rhyming pages, ending with:

Well it's time for the camel to pass.
So let's all reach and raise up a glass.
Let's give'm the credit,
the one who will get it,
the poor bastard we're gonna harass.

Assaad theorizes that the Camel Club and the racial discrimination he experienced were at least partly an outgrowth of a dispute he had with Zack and Rippy over the authorship of a scientific paper for which he says he had done the research. Rippy and Zack, Assaad says, had done only minor work, but wanted to put their names on the research paper, and he says he felt they didn't deserve it. Assaad says the dispute escalated, with Rippy and Zack threatening to be disruptive and humiliate him at a scientific conference where he delivered his paper's findings. Then, he says, their harassment took an ethnic cast, because of his Arabic heritage.