Why won't django import my settings file?

I am using the "fantasy island" release of OSQA. When I run manage.py and try to import the user module, I get an error:

>>> from forum.models import Users
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<console>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/home/baileyj/osqa-server/forum/models/__init__.py", line 33, in <module>
    for k, v in get_modules_script_classes('models', models.Model).items():
  File "/home/baileyj/osqa-server/forum/modules/__init__.py", line 44, in get_modules_script_classes
    scripts = get_modules_script(script_name)
  File "/home/baileyj/osqa-server/forum/modules/__init__.py", line 12, in get_modules_script
    for m in settings.MODULE_LIST:
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'MODULE_LIST'

My DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE variable points to "settings". Strangely, if I import settings, I can see MODULE_LIST. Changing modules/init.py to "import settings" rather than "from django.conf import settings" also makes the problem go away.

Any ideas what I've got misconfigured?