Posted on 12/18/2009 2:31:09 AM PST by NYer
MESQUITE, Texas - Joe Mitchell says all he wanted to do was make crosses as gifts for friends when he signed up for a ceramics class at Eastfield Community College in Mesquite.
Instead, he says, the ceramics instructor compared the crucifix to a swastika in trying to explain why crosses were not permitted.
“I felt humiliated and that my spirituality was being demeaned,” said Mitchell, a retired Dallas resident and student at the public college. “The whole point of art is to express who you are.”
Mitchell says he was told on several occasions by instructors and administrative staff that he could not make ceramic crosses, concluding with an ultimatum ban on crosses this fall.
“Unfortunately, not everyone has the Christmas spirit or even a basic understanding of religious freedom,” said Kelly Shackelford, chief counsel of Liberty Legal Institute. “The government cannot ban crosses and religious symbols.”
Shakelford says college officials are not only banning crosses, but menorahs and other religious items from the class.
In response, the institute sent a demand letter on Tuesday on behalf of Mitchell, alleging the school has committed an unconstitutional attack on religious expression in the classroom.
Eastfield Community College officials issued a statement saying it's legal council will review the schools policy and language, quote:
"Eastfield College's current ceramics policy tells students that they should not use symbols, icons or other "cookie cutter" images. The purpose of those references is to compel students to create original works that express their artistic perspectives through projects assigned by instructors. The college has never intended to circumvent expressions of religious or artistic freedom or violate any laws with regard to religious freedom. "
I bet they would not have complained if he had a crucifix displayed in a jar of urine. That would have been protected and esteemed.
Yea pots and tiles are so much more "substantial".
So, simply make the cross more substantial. There are hundreds of different styles, and they are not all as simple as the Latin cross.
I strongly recommend that you google Ceramic crosses/ crucifixs and see what comes up.
Shakelford says college officials are not only banning crosses, but menorahs and other religious items from the class.
Everytime a groupd of republicans comments about how conservative is the State of TExas it would be well to remember stories like this and that until Tom Leppert was elected mayor of Dallas EVERY major city was run by DemocRATS. We are one election away form returning to a aoo years of RATS if we lose sight of the grass roots - schools.
You're right. Next class: Star of David, then on to the bonus round: ceramic fractals.
Well iffen it ain’t whut is?
The class is for ceramics. We all lack the ability to read the class curriculum. So no way to see what ‘items’ may be required to be fashioned to pass the class.
Was it a ‘simple’ cross? Were there photos? Was it a case of the teacher saying that the project was not ‘complex’ enough? None of those things was mentioned.
It was a teacher restricting the student from fashioning, specifically, a religious item. It was a case of an anti-Christian person, using his ‘superior’ position as a teacher, to try to demean a persons Faith.
If he had fashioned a flat pancake, he should be graded accordingly, provided there was guidance on what was expected.
We have already lost the schools to Bill Ayers and his ilk. Check out how many of the Weather Underground are in postions of influence in our schools. It is not by accident. Number 17 of the Goals for a Communist takeover of America states “Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.” Few would argue that they have not been successful. While they have achieved great success regarding #28,”Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”, they have not and cannot remove God from our hearts and that is our greatest strength. Pray daily that despite their stated goals and apparent success in achieving same we will survive as “One nation under God, with liberty and justice for all”.
It's an even shot as to whether the illiteracy lies with the reporter or the the junior college.
you are too right. The state of Texas buys so many school books that they can MAKE them conservative and kill the Ayers coalition - but conservatives have not done a good job of writing better books. They are all talk.hat...at Hertiage and NRO no cattle.
email sent
Regardless, I don't think the real issue is that the work Mitchell is producing is too simple. Crosses or crucifixes, the "problem" is that he is making an obvious Christian symbol. The Tolerance Police simply will not tolerate that!
When will Christians of all types band together and put a stop to this nonsense? All one needs to do is point-out that, at the time of the Constitution's formulation and subsequent ratification, there were still five states with an "established religion." The last of them (Massachusetts) did not formally remove Congregationalism as the Established Religion of the Commonwealth until 1833! This means that, for over 40 years after the Federal Constitution went into effect, at least one state held to things like mandatory Christian belief for office holders, and taxes levied and collected for a specific denomination, and neither Congress nor the U.S. Supreme Court ever intervened. They did not, because they knew that the U.S. Constitution granted them no authority to do so! How, then, can anyone with a straight face say that the logical absurdities brought up in this thread can really find their origin in "Constitutional issues"?
Mind you, I don't think that states having established religions, religious requirements for office holders, and so forth, is a good idea. But that is not the point. The Constitution only prohibits Congress from establishing religions at the Federal level. Christians need to take the argument back from the relative handful of village atheists and other cranks and insist that all of this controversy based on a manifestly false set of premises come to an abrupt and permanent end!
That means he was concerned about the ideological/philosophical content of the product, NOT that it was too simple to fulfill the course requirements.
Had he been concerned about that, he would have used your comparison to a "pancake".
That convinces me that this is a religious freedom issue, not a course requirements issue. The latter is simply a smoke screen invented by the administration (or their lawyer, as in, "You guys had better dream up a bona fide reason for this tout suite . . . or you're TOAST!")
Many people take these courses to make gifts for friends.
This was an instructor who thought he'd shove a kid around to push his personal agenda and was surprised when the kid pushed back.
That’s a plausible reason. But did the instructor say that?
Did the student have any sense of this situation before making a cross? Creating a simple cross or a sophisticated crucifix are two different things.
It's easy to assume that the teacher is a knee-jerk secular humanist and chose to criticize what was supposed to be an easy target - a religious symbol.
If the artwork is sufficiently advanced to show a real effort then the student should sue or whatever.
Hopefully, if the student sues and the artwork becomes public domain, we won't be embarrassed by the lack of effort and imagination that it took to put two pieces of clay together at right angles.
The bottom line is they did not want a cross made at all.
To them a cross could never be "substantial", but any "tile" or piece of "pottery" is.
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