Posted on 05/07/2008 2:11:50 PM PDT by dynachrome
When some parents at Prairie View Middle School asked for a separate lunch table for their children during the Ramadan fast, Principal Joel Martin thought the request seemed reasonable.
As long as the gathering of fasting students didn't disrupt and didn't cost the district anything, Martin had no qualm with offering the religious accommodation.
» Click to enlarge image
Ryan Vandewiel collected about 60 signatures on a petition at Prairie View School to have the administration set aside lunch tables for practicing Catholics during the Lenten season. (Carol Dorsett/SouthtownStar)
If you go ... The Kirby School District 140 board will have a committee meeting at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at the Administrative Center, 16931 S. Grissom Drive, Tinley Park. On the agenda is "cultural diversity." But his decision rubbed parent Jennifer Cimaglia the wrong way. And when the school shot down a similar, mid-Lenten request by seventh-grader Ryan Vandewiel and 60 or so of his classmates who signed a petition seeking separate seating for observant Catholics, the Tinley Park mother of three decided "enough is enough."
"It's not just about the table," Cimaglia said. "It appears that there is preferential treatment for the Muslim students
(Excerpt) Read more at southtownstar.com ...
Thanks to Key Largo for the heads up on this.
Without trying to sound too racist ( I know that is not PC ) ... what is wrong with the white people of this country? They are just sitting back while any group that complains gets their way and flushes this country down the cultural toilet.
It isn’t racist to observe the obvious and quantifiable truth that Europeans and European-Americans are bringing about their own destruction.
If the little $h!t$ are to be given a fasting-friendly Ramadan table, it should be loaded with pork rinds, ham sandwiches, BLTs, and pigs’ knuckles. Hey, they’re fasting anyway...no big deal.
Yeah but when it comes to policing other white people for racism or cultural insensitivity, they’re all fired up & ready for war.
>>If the little $h!t$ are to be given a fasting-friendly Ramadan table, it should be loaded with pork rinds, ham sandwiches, BLTs, and pigs’ knuckles. Hey, they’re fasting anyway...no big deal.<<
I don’t agree.
I also don’t agree that either Muslims or Catholics should be allowed a special table.
Where is the sacrifice in all of it if it’s made easy?
And yes I am Catholic.
I have never heard of a Lenten table. What would the children do there?
Abstain from meat on Fridays.
Yea but do you need a separate table for that?
INTREP
So they give a table to Muslim children in the lunch room to sit and not eat? Why not just let them quietly sit in the library?
“they give a table to Muslim children in the lunch room to sit and not eat?”
It lets the dhimmis know who is in charge.
Seems kinda mean to make them sit there hungry smelling everyone else’s lunch. Maybe they only fast between meals.
They fast during the daylight hours.
Wouldn’t the other children eating around them be offensive or make them feel left out or discriminated against the same way a cross, praying or the name of Jesus Christ does?
Why wouldn’t that be a problem all year long? Again, I have never heard of anyone asking to segregate Catholic children from the others for any purpose.
Oh, you are talking about the Muslim children. Hard to keep this straight.
Eat fish on Fridays, I suppose, given that that’s all that’s left of the Latin church’s Lenten aescetic discipline.
Now it was a bunch of Orthodox Christian parents demanding a special Lenten table, it would make sense, as we’re supposed to lay off any food that comes from an animal with a backbone (no meat, fish, dairy, eggs), and oil as well (usually interpreted as olive oil by Greeks and Arabs, though Slavs and monastics are stricter) and wine (not an issue with school kids however interpreted.)
I think the other protestant, jewish and muslim kids would want another table to get away from the stink of egg salad and tuna fish.
“Martin said Tuesday he never intended to set a double standard for students — particularly along religious lines. He only rejected the proposal for Catholic students to have a meat-free lunch table on Fridays because they hadn’t thought out the proposal enough to ask before the Lenten season began.”
Yes he is. In every respect. Although, I am not Catholic; I remember meatless Fridays.
What our fine educational leaders like our fine politicians and idiots that run things are doing is playing with our minds to incite negative behavior and reactions so they can claim control. It’s a part of bringing us into the fold of communism or whatever ism they prefer.
Anyway, it’s to divide and conquer rather than unite.
Emasculated politicians and bureaucrats dictated to by affirmative action commissars
If they're fasting, WHY do they need a table??? When the Muslims fast, they don't eat until evening. So, why the table?
Tinley Park is located in Illinois, just southwest of Chicago. That should explain everything you need to know about the situation. Islam has been creeping into our area like a vile fungus for years.
I think it was just a matter of principle, on account of the Muslim kids having gotten a special table to serve their religious dietary observances.
Exactly.
Liberals are islam’s useful idiots.
I don’t understand the silence of the homosexuals, considering how the islam-o-thugs treat them.
But as with Ramadan, why do it if it isn't hard? They don't eat from sunrise to sunset. We don't eat meat on Fridays (it's supposed to be every Friday but most disregard that, my family doesn't).
If there is no food available or no meat then it's not really a personal sacrifice is it>
It’s 5:00 somewhere, sundown somewhere else...
UPDATE:
Yep the Democrats want to put everyone in separate catagories.
What happened to Obama’s we are the world?
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District 140 to allow separate lunch tables during Lent
(http://www.southtownstar.com/news/940470,050908foodfightfolo.article)
May 9, 2008
BY WILLIAM LEE, staff writer
A Tinley Park school board committee on Thursday sought to defuse a brewing religious controversy by announcing that Catholic students will be allowed to eat lunch at their own tables during Lent next year.
The announcement, made at the start of a packed meeting, didn’t stop some parents and students in Kirby District 140 from voicing displeasure at what they called preferential treatment for Muslim students, who were allowed to sit together last fall while fasting during Ramadan.
The uproar began when about 60 Catholic students at Prairie View Middle School petitioned to have meat-free tables during Lent, and the school principal failed to respond.
Thursday’s meeting, held at the District 140 administrative center, brought out about 50 people. School board president Thomas Martelli told the audience Thursday that no decision was made on the student petition because it was presented in the middle of Lent.
District 140 Supt. Michael Byrne said requests for separate tables for students observing Ramadan and Lent was “reasonable,” saying it would not cause a disruption in the school nor would it cost the district a penny.
“It’s a reasonable thing to do, and quite frankly, we could see no compelling reason not to do it,” Byrne said.
Board attorney Thomas Melody backed Byrne, saying the board is required to provide reasonable accommodations for religious expression by students.
Prairie View seventh-grader Ryan Vandewiel, who led the petition drive, spoke to the board Thursday night, saying the petition wasn’t about prejudice but about separation of church and state.
“Muslim students are very strong in their faith; they can abstain from eating (during) Ramadan by themselves; temptation is part of the sacrifice,” he said, reading from a prepared statement. “Catering to one religion and not others is wrong.”
Nicholas Tassone, another Prairie View student, told board members that a public school district “shouldn’t have set-aside rules for other religions, and if (some students) want that, they they should attend their own private schools.”
While there were few outbursts during the meeting, some in the audience grumbled when school officials denied giving special treatment to minority students.
One parent said such special treatment was creating a rift between white and Arab students.
“It’s not just lunch, it’s small things that add up, and there’s a lot of tension between the kids, between the cultures, and it’s sad to see,” Jennifer Cimaglia said.
But Linda Murray, a Prairie View science teacher, worried that children were learning to categorize and segregate themselves.
“I just hope to God that we do not leave our children with a sense of it’s OK to say, ‘You’re white, you’re green, you’re black, you’re Muslim, you’re Catholic.’ I don’t want that to happen; we are all in this together,” Murray said.
William Lee can be reached at wlee@southtownstar.com or (708) 633-6747.
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