http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/leo051600.asp
The scheduling of a picnic to honor baseball Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson led to a furor over alleged racism at the State University of New York, Albany. Some 40 students at the university insisted that the word "picnic" originally referred to the lynchings of blacks.
They were wrong. "Picnic" comes from a 17th-century French word for a social gathering in which each person brings a different food. But in reply to the 40 protesters, campus affirmative action director Zaheer Mustafa put out a memo asking all student leaders to refrain from any use of the word "picnic." "Whether the claims are true or not, the point is the word offended," he said.
In publicity for the event honoring Jackie Robinson, the word "picnic" was changed to "outing." This offended gay students, so the event formerly known as a picnic was publicized without a noun describing what was going on. "Every day we come up with a new word we can't use," said exasperated student editor Richard Ryback