Posted on 06/17/2004 7:21:12 AM PDT by esryle
COVINGTON, Ky. (AP) -- When Covington schools Superintendent Jack Moreland saw an advertisement for a Chippendales show, he thought it would be a good morale booster for his female employees. So he shelled out $420 to send 20 female staff members to a Chippendales show to see buff men strip off most of their clothing.
It worked, but it also raised the ire of at least one person, who wrote an anonymous letter to the state Office of Education Accountability accusing Moreland of using school-district funds to pay for the strip show.
Moreland said he spent $420 of his own money for the show - and faxed his personal credit-card receipt to investigators.
"I did it in fun, and they went in fun, and I don't think there was any harm done," he said.
Bryan Jones, a lawyer for the Office of Education Accountability, said he couldn't confirm or deny whether his office looked into a complaint.
The women who attended the show said they enjoyed it.
"We just laughed and laughed and laughed," said Jena Meehan, the superintendent's secretary. "It was a spectacle, to be sure, and to have all of us there was even funnier."
Chippendales is a high-class male revue that became popular in the 1980s. Well-muscled young men wearing bow-ties and bare chests strip to scanty undies for female audiences.
Moreland is the former president of the Council for Better Education, the superintendents group that brought the historic lawsuit that resulted in the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990 and its revolutionary reform of Kentucky's public schools.
"This boss was OBVIOUSLY thinking this was a good idea. What if you didn't think so, and was branded for it."
Thats stupid. Tell your boss that your husband/boyfriend won't let you go. No one would give it a second thought. No one would ever give you a hard time for not going to a strip club. At least not in this context.
I can see where a boss who expects a female employee to help entertain a client at a traditional strip club could feel pressured to go, and that would be totally wrong, but this was for the employee's fun, not part of work.
Sounds good to me. We ARE adults here.
What do you mean WE, Kemo Sabe?:^)
Seriously, those rules sound good to me too. Now comes the hard part, convincing Colofornian that he got it right.
ho boy, and the first McCarthy era has a bad rep.
This time it's going to be "Are you now, or have you ever been a comedian?"
Apparently comedians are part of The Enemy now. Who knew?
Oh, I get it. If I try to tell adults--say like these teachers--that what they did was immoral, that would be imposing my own morality on them. But if you, o divine, gatekeeper one, if you try to impose your morality on me by saying I have no right to tell these other adults what to do, then that is not imposing your morality on me because I still retain the right to tell my own children my own moral code.
What a double standard! You're telling me that adults like you can pre-empt & verbally whip folks like me because we're trying to infringe on individual rights. And that's not imposing any standards? Isn't that the same thing? One adult telling another adult what they can say or do?
Saying you can't personally impose it on a larger group is simply stating that you don't have the right to decide for everyone what is and isn't ok.
Allow me to quote this standard of yours right back at you: You, livianne, cannot personally impose your standard of folks like me not being able to "impose my personal standard on a larger group" because "you don't have the right to decide for everyone (hello! "everyone" includes me and folks like me) what is and isn't ok" as to what we can say in the public square.
I don't believe I have limited YOUR ability to live as you please,
Except you would take away my voice if you had a choice. You don't think views like mine should be uttered, lest they put educators like these at risk.
"live and let live" doesn't mean let someone else walk all over other people's individual rights because they are personally outraged.
Nor does "live and let live" mean letting adults tred all over the innocence of influential children around them by flaunting their public behavior that eventually reverberates all around these children.
If they do innappropriate things IN THE CLASSROOM, then fire them. However, people shouldn't be punished for things that they might, maybe, hypothetically do.
"Thats stupid."
Sigh!!! The reply of a true intellectual. I wasn't only talking about THIS particular episode of boss coercion.
I don't think bosses should mandate (or appear to mandate...by PERSONAL funds, hmmm?) ANY outside activities, unless, of course, it is part of the job description.
World Vision, for example, makes no bones about the fact that it wants to hire Christians who will take part in and lead prayer services. Bingo! Up front about it.
Again, what if it were about a political candidate, a voter referendum, a play his wife was directing ("...Monologues???).
There is too much room for abuse.
No, your Bible was not fine with any of those. In Genesis, God said man would cling to the woman. Singular. And God warned Israel's kings about the effect of having multiple wives. Almost every time you see multiple wives they are associated with trouble, in the Bible. The Apostle Paul said to let every man have his own wife, and every wife her own husband.
The Bible didn't condon Abraham's sex with his servant, it was an act of disbelief that God would keep his promise. And from that act, there has been costant enmity between Israel and the Arabs. The consequences of that act were immense.
The Bible also didn't generally condone slavery. Slavery was an exception. God promised that there would be no poor in Israel if they followed God's commandment. In Exodus, Israel was forbidden from making merchandise of a man. Slavery was allowed only in certain circumstances like when someone picked an unjust war with Israel and go their but kicked, they might find themselves in slavery.
But the Bible also gave advice to men recognizing their fallen condition. Multiple wives and slavery were common in the culture surrounding Isarel. Therefore, the Bible gave advice on how to treat multiple wives, and slaves.
"if they make inappropriate comments, deal with THAT, not what they might do."
I'd rather deal with the fact that they have already shown themselves to be inappropriate role models by their conduct outside of class.
"again, I could SWEAR good Christians didn't judge others"
You would be swearing wrong. Contrary to popular belief, the Bible commands that Christians judge others. It tells us to discern the spirits, to discern good from evil, it tells us to warn the wicked, it tells us to rebuke our neighbor frankly so that we don't share in his sin, it tells us to love justice. All of those imply and require judging.
Leviticus 19:15 - Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment: thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honor the person of the mighty: but in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbour.
When Jesus said "Judge not", he was referring to the kind of judging that Jonah had towards Ninevah. Jonah didn't want to warn Ninevah because Jonah felt like Ninevah deserved what God was going to dish out and Jonah didn't want Ninevah to repent and God to show them mercy.
The kind of Judging a person that the Bible says don't do is the kind where you look at a person and say that person is not worthy of God's mercy. I'm not going to tell them about God. Let them go to Hell, they've got it coming. That's a failure to love.
But to judge that a person is on the pathway to Hell, because they haven't accept Jesus and to warn them, to evaluate whether a teacher is morally fit to teach your kids, to judge whether something is a sin and to confront the sinner with his sin. Those things we ARE to do.
Hope that clarifies the Judging issue.
Of course- it's the old Puritan ideal, after all.
Nope, I don't attend Kerry fundraisers.
You never laugh spontaneously, out of sheer joy at life?
Only above 10,000 feet
Isn't that sort of how Free Republic works?
They are a role model for kids. What they do IN and OUT of the classroom is relevant to how good a role model they can be. They shouldn't be punished for things they might do, but if they have shown a lack of judgement outside of the classroom, we are under no obligation to let them teach our kids, because of the the things that they HAVE done, not the things they MIGHT do.
What planet are you from? Are you saying upon the first showing of someone relaying diverse standards from your own, you and most FREEP posters automatically w/draw onto other posting areas?
That's not even reflective of this single article & postings, let alone what FREE REPUBLIC is all about.
"I don't think bosses should mandate (or appear to mandate...by PERSONAL funds, hmmm?) ANY outside activities, unless, of course, it is part of the job description. "
I agree but that isn't the case here. You are the only one arguing on that basis. It simply doesn't apply. Sorry for stating the obvious, but it is "stupid".
No there might well be funds authorized for extracurricular activities for the staff that are team building and/or morale boosting. Those funds might include parties.
It's the nature of the party that is the issue.
I'm not a big fan of unions, but these teachers are probably covered by a collective bargaining agreement. So, the blue-noses are probably out of luck if they want to fire them. So sorry.
Personally, I don't consider their behavior immoral nor depraved and I would have no problems with them teaching my kids.
The problem is, of course, where we draw the line. I do not, and most people do not, think that attending a Chippendales show is illustrative of bad character. The community will decide that. IF the community thinks this was deplorable behavior, the community outrage will take care of the matter. I live in Covington and I'll bet I won't hear a word about it.
A teacher at a Catholic school might get into trouble for having a live-in relationship, while a public school teacher may not.
If someone could prove that attending Chippendales shows leads to bad classroom behavior, I'd be happy to change my mind. No one has.
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