Posted on 01/16/2008 2:58:37 PM PST by tobyhill
WASHINGTON A high school track star has been disqualified from a meet because officials said the custom-made outfit she wears to conform to her Muslim faith violated competition rules.
Juashaunna Kelly, a senior at the District of Columbia's Theodore Roosevelt High School, has the fastest mile and two-mile times of any girls' runner in the city this winter. She was disqualified from Saturday's Montgomery Invitational indoor track and field meet.
Kelly was wearing the same uniform she has worn for the past three seasons while running for Theodore Roosevelt's cross-country and track teams. The custom-made, one-piece blue and orange unitard covers her head, arms, torso and legs. Over the unitard, she wears the same orange and blue T-shirt and shorts as her teammates.
The outfit allows her to compete while adhering to her Muslim faith, which forbids displaying any skin other than her face and hands.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
I’m with you. From the story, it also sounds like this young lady provided her own custom uniform rather than demanding that the school provide one for her. It appears the she came up with a sensible compromise between her religious beliefs and the school’s uniform requirements. I would hope that that a conservative Christian or Orthodox Jewish girl in a similar situation would be allowed a similar accomodation.
Public schools are not supposed to accommodate her religious beliefs.
The extra clothing and veil would probably slow her down.
I gotta agree in this case. What good does this do? It's not as if she is demanding to cover her face in a drivers license photo or not have sell pork if after she chose to work in a grocery store. She simply found a way to meet her religious needs while participating in American culture. It sure doesn't seem to give her a competitive edge. I say let her run in the outfit and be an example to other young Muslims that our culture is one that will accept differences (within reason). It is their old culture back in its birthplace that is the exclusive and backwards culture.
Rogers said he knew Kelly was wearing the uniform for religious reasons and that he offered her several options to conform to the rules while still respecting her faith, including placing a plain T-shirt over her unitard and then wearing her team uniform over it.***
She refused acceptable options.
It isn't smacking her down to tell her that she has to wear the same clothes as other students. It is a matter of fairness.
There can be a tremendous physical advantage getting to wear warm clothes when the girls running next to her in the photo are wearing thin shorts and it is cold and wintry. The article says that she "has the fastest mile and two-mile times of any girls' runner in the city this winter".
If I was a competing runner, I would be sure that either I got to wear the same clothes as she does if I chose to do so, or that she followed the same rules as I'd have to. Why is her race more important than those of the other students?
I read about this earlier somewhere. The girl’s uniform did not conform to uniform regulations of the association that sanctioned the meet. Either she would have to conform or the meet would lose its sanction to the disadvantage of its sponsors and all the other competitors. The problem with the uniform she had on related to the color scheme, not the hijab and the long johns she was wearing. I suppose that had her coach or she inquired, she could easily have shown up wearing an outfit that suited the mohammedans and met the regulations, but evidently no one asked. I am sorry she did not get to compete, but she’ll get over it, and in the future will show up in something that meets expectations on the part of both the athletic association and herself. I wonder if the mohammedans will actually make much of a deal of it? The MSM naturally had to get right on this. If it had been Cindy Lou of Whoville wearing an outfit that did not conform to color regs, it wouldn’t even make the Whoville Gazette, but the victim was a member of a racial minority and a poor persecuted sect with only about a billion members, so it’s got to be milked by the press for all it’s worth until some rape, murder, fire or whatever captures their attention.
Why do you say that?
She has worn the same uniform for three years and never had a problem. Why now, when she is the fastest girl in the meet, do the meet officials decide that her uniform in inappropriate?
I don’t see this as the girl asking for special concessions. What she is wearing is a fair compromise between her personal beliefs and the uniform requirements. She receives no advantage.
This has nothing to do with separation of church and state.
The ACLU says so.
Again I repeat:
Team sports do not accommodate any other garment than the team uniform.
That’s it.
This girl is not being forced to participate as a member of the team - it was her choice - and she knew going into the team sport she would be required to wear an unacceptable uniform which did not comply with Muslim tradition.
Schools funded by taxpayer dolalrs do not accommodate religious belief. Religious schools do.
Make another choice!
Back in high school one of my teammates wore some different colored shoes for practice and our head coach went ballistic. I could just imagine what he would do with this person.
It wasn't the girl who was offended, it was the officials. If anything this uniform is a handicap, not an advantage. She would probably break all sorts of records if she ran in shorts. The vast majority of the comments on this board are from morons. This girl has been wearing it for 3 years! Why the bitching now?
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“There can be a tremendous physical advantage getting to wear warm clothes when the girls running next to her in the photo are wearing thin shorts and it is cold and wintry. “
Please. I am sure all these girls produce sufficient body heat to keep warm while they are running, even when wearing thin shorts. Staying warm is rarely a consideration when running long distances, even when it is cold. That is why the runners take off the sweatpants and the sweatshirts when they get ready to run. I run every morning, and I can assure you that after the first few minutes, keeping warm is not a problem.
Why didn’t it matter for the first three years that she wore it?
She and her mother say that is not true, and the officials kept changing the requirements.
I don't know who is telling the truth, but it does not appear to me that the unitard would give her a competitive advantage; if anything, the opposite.
I really don't see the problem, and the tone of some of the posts here is really rather offensive.
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