Posted on 04/01/2005 8:59:43 PM PST by jimboster
The owner of a McDonald's restaurant in the Hyde Park neighborhood scrapped a policy Thursday that required Kenwood Academy High School students to sit in a separate area from other customers, after a student protesting the policy was handcuffed by Chicago police and taken back to campus. Catherine Smith, 15, was two bites into her Chicken Selects Wednesday when a security guard ordered her and her friends to move because they were sitting in a "non-student" area, she said. "I paid for the food just like everyone else and I'm not leaving," Smith responded. The security guard then called Chicago police. Undercover officers approached Smith and said she was trespassing and resisting arrest. They handcuffed the honor student, led her out of the popular student hangout, placed her in a squad car and took her back to campus, Smith said. Administrators decided to take no disciplinary action against Smith, who is considered a model student. She was allowed to return to class, Assistant Principal Elizabeth Kirby said.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
Nonsmoking?
This McDonald's made the mistake of trying to accommodate adult lunchtime customers at a restaurant near an open campus public high school. I think it was a great idea. The restaurant has every right to set up the restrictions it did and the owner should have told the loud mouthed girl, her mother and her aunt where they could stick it.If you read the story, you'd see the kid and her relatives didn't have a Constitutional leg to stand on. By the same token, the owner would have to accept the consequences of the kids possibly boycotting the restaurant, not to mention the local media making the loud mouthed punk a hero.
The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Because white males aren't squeaking enough, the advertising industry feels that WM's are the only ones whom they can safely take swipes at, or ridicule in television commercials (like Cingular Wireless,etc.) The meek inherit nothing (on this earth at least).
""I paid for the food just like everyone else and I'm not leaving," Smith responded. ""
I think this is more than likely the problem. The students/kids buy some food and never leave !!! They treat it as a hangout , being loud and acting like idiots, and validate their hanging around by saying they are paying customers.
Does the owner have a right to chuck people out who are not using the facility as it was intended, as a restuarant? I say absolutely yes.
It looks like the owner tried to control the situation by sectioning off the students from the other customers, but the students being educated in sensitivity, seen this as some kind of insult.
I feel for the owner, he is in a tough spot.
If the students dont' like his policy they can stop going to his restaurant.. or even stop going to all McDonalds... That is what would happen in a society that respects private property rights.
In America big brother steps in, and tells the owner the rules for his own store. Pushed on by our highly paid intellectuals who only ever seem to have read one western philosopher in all their vast studies.. Karl Marx.
Was Catherine Smith, 15 acting like a hooker?
Now the loser comes back and shoots the winner.
You're probably right. I think what the owner should have done is what NYC fast food places often do to prevent such loitering -- give you a 20 minute time limit to sit in the restaurant.
If a McDonalds or any other restaurant segregated me from the rest of the crowd I'd raise all kinds of hell before taking my money elsewhere.
amen
I don't get it.
article: was two bites into her Chicken Selects
IMO - should she be segregated as an employee - yup
IMO - the guard should have gotten the Mgr - who should have fired her for breaking policy
What exactly was the reasoning for segerating students from the regular schmos who eat at McDonalds? What if, instead of students.....they had christians or republicans cornered off into a corner of a store. Would you and the rest still be calling this kid a "punk?" Me thinks not
Why are people bringing race into this? isnt this about McDonalds and people being seperated because they are students?
hmmmm.....just curious....were you a Terri Schiavo fanatic..errrrrr, supporter who thought the US goverment should have stepped in a private matter between a husband and a wife? See where Im going with this?
2. Its FRIGGIN' McDonald's! The ghetto eatery of choice along with (fill in name here) Chinese Takeout and Popeye's Chicken. And you wonder why Southsiders are so fat!
Is that for real?
In my day we would criminalize ourselves. Kids today have no initiative.
LOL!!!!!!
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