Loyola University Chicago, a Catholic school, invited popular comedian Hannibal Buress to perform for students last Saturday. Administrators asked him to comply with restrictive content guidelines. Buress agreed.

You can probably guess what happened next.

Buress began by displaying what appeared to be an email outlining the school's content restrictions on a projector screen. After flagrantly violating those restrictions with an explicit quip about priest molestation, the school cut Buress' microphone. Students booed the decision, and Buress eventually left the stage before returning to finish his set after 15 minutes, according to the student newspaper, which also reported that his return was greeted with a standing ovation.

The paper further reported that Buress told students "he was originally going to follow Loyola’s content restriction until he saw that he’d already been paid for his performance ahead of time." Given his style of comedy, I can't even imagine what a Hannibal Buress set that complied with the school's restrictions would look like. But he was apparently willing to lie, take their money, and then try.

This is an odd situation for a few reasons. Given that Buress made and then violated the agreement, Loyola's decision to cut his microphone seems reasonable. But it's unclear why the school ever would have invited the comedian to perform in the first place if they knew anything about his work.

According to the image Buress displayed, Loyola's restrictions stipulated his performance could not contain "content about rape, sexual assault, race, sexual orientation/gender." Even for a private school, that's casting a pretty wide net, especially for a comedian who focuses on race. If you're going to limit artists from exploring those topics, why bother inviting them?

Granted, the restrictions were likely drafted to prevent racy performers like Buress from addressing those topics in a particular way. And his quip was extremely provocative. But disregarding the content of that specific joke, if you need to censor artists to the degree Loyola's guidelines do just to allow them to get in front of students, diluting their acts to apolitical shells of their normal routines, what's the point? Save the money and get a ventriloquist.

H/T The College Fix