Posted on 03/21/2013 1:01:26 PM PDT by massmike
A Florida Atlantic University student said he was punished after he refused a professor’s directive to stomp on a piece of paper with the word “Jesus” written on it. The university, meanwhile, is defending the assignment as a lesson in debate.
“I’m not going to be sitting in a class having my religious rights desecrated,” student Ryan Rotela told television station WPEC. “I truly see this as I’m being punished.”
Rotela, who is a devout Mormon, said the instructor in his Intercultural Communications class told the students to write the name “Jesus” on a sheet of paper. Then, they were told to put the paper on the floor.
“He had us all stand up and he said ‘Stomp on it,’” Rotela said. “I picked up the paper from the floor and put it right back on the table.
The young college student told the instructor, Deandre Poole, that the assignment was insulting and offensive. “I said to the professor, ‘With all due respect to your authority as a professor, I do not believe what you told us to do was appropriate,’” Rotela said. ‘I believe it was unprofessional and I was deeply offended by what you told me to do.’”
Rotela took his concerns to Poole’s supervisor – where he was promptly suspended from the class.
Poole did not return calls seeking comment. According to his university profile, he has a PhD from Howard University and is authoring a book titled, “Obamamania: The Rise of a Mythical Hero.”
The university did not explain why students were only instructed to write the name of Jesus – and not the name of Mohammed or another religious figure.
(Excerpt) Read more at radio.foxnews.com ...
Intercultural Communications class
This is likely a course of study leading to a "want fries with that?" opportunity.....
People threatening violence or wishing violent punishment on this professor are stomping on the name of Jesus too.
He should have offered to write Poole’s name on paper and perform said action.
Professor Cess-Poole was just channeling 0bama.
Worthy of FR post of the week.
The spirit of antichrist is prevalent and increasing in these last days. But Jesus said not to fear but rejoice for our redemption draws near.
nothing today is ‘politics’...its just the evil one feelin frisky, and ramping up his nastiness......
Yep, no ambiguity with that story.
But WTF was he doing taking Intercultural Communications class ??
When I was in college I stuck with useful classes.
You take crap like that when you are looking to progress yourself, lean forward and such.
>>> Intercultural Communications class
>>
>> There’s part of the problem right there.
>
> I do suspect that the course catalog description did him (and everybody else enrolled) a major disservice.
I’m going to disagree w/mtg and somewhat agree w/alancarp: there’s whole segments of business that need intercultural communication — any international business really... and that’s saying nothing of interpreters and diplomats. (The caveat being that it has to actually be about communication.)
A good question... let me answer with a question:
How difficult would it be for you to start up a business, say picking up junk, refurbishing it, and reselling it (though the details really don't matter)?
How difficult would the government (all levels) make it to start? How difficult would it be, strictly due government involvement, to turn a profit?
I never recognize answers that are not answers but questions, but thank you for playing.
But the questions's answers are the [partial] answers to the question "are we free?"
Indeed the foundation and legitimacy of our government is outlined in the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.Namely that "pursuit of Happiness" wherewhich we are endowed by our Creator is the essential factor here: one of the main pillars of fulfillment for a man is his job, but if the government takes the freedom to succeed/fail away they take away the happiness gained from it (and implicitly destroy many liberties), and the extreme case where the government treats people like cogs in a machine dictating the occupation moreso (to the point of explicitly denying liberty).
The question "are we free" carries a very heavy weight in America, because if the answer is 'no' then the government is invalid (despite it's own protests) precisely because of our founding [in part] on the pursuit of happiness.
This is likely a course of study leading to a "want fries with that?" opportunity.....
I'm a little surprised by how many people are expressing this sentiment. I was in school in the '90s and even then, courses like this were part of my university's core curriculum. You'd have a major and take the courses required by your department, but you couldn't graduate without some variant of women's/race studies or "intercultural awareness." The women's and race studies classes were blatantly intended as indoctrination, but the course catalogs always made the awareness classes sound interesting and pertinent. It wasn't until you were actually in the class being asked to write essays using only modern source material about how "Jews and Christians never really believed in God, it was just how they expressed their culture," that the agenda became apparent.
Meanwhile, in the Objective Room, something like a crisis had developed between Mark and Professor Frost. As soon as they arrived there Mark saw that the table had been drawn back. On the floor lay a large crucifix, almost life size, a work of art in the Spanish tradition, ghastly and realistic. “We have half an hour to pursue our exercises,” said Frost looking at his watch. Then he instructed Mark to trample on it and insult it in other ways.
Now whereas Jane had abandoned Christianity in early childhood, along with her belief in fairies and Santa Claus, Mark had never believed in it at all. At this moment, therefore, it crossed his mind for the very first time that there might conceivably be something in it. Frost who was watching him carefully knew perfectly well that this might be the result of the present experiment. He knew it for the very good reason that his own training by the Macrobes had, at one point, suggested the same odd idea to himself. But he had no choice. Whether he wished it or not this sort of thing was part of the initiation.
“But, look here,” said Mark.
“What is it?” said Frost. “Pray be quick. We have only a limited time at our disposal.”
“This,” said Mark, pointing with an undefined reluctance to the horrible white figure on the cross. “This is all surely a pure superstition.”
“Well?”
“Well, if so, what is there objective about stamping on the face? Isn’t it just as subjective to spit on a thing like this as to worship it? I mean – damn it all – if it’s only a bit of wood, why do anything about it?”
“That is superficial. If you had been brought up in a non-Christian society, you would not be asked to do this. Of course, it is a superstition; but it is that particular superstition which has pressed upon our society for a great many centuries. It can be experimentally shown that it still forms a dominant system in the subconscious of many individuals whose conscious thought appears to be wholly liberated. An explicit action in the reverse direction is therefore a necessary step towards complete objectivity. It is not a question for ‘a priori’ discussion. We find in practice that it cannot be dispensed with.”
Mark himself was surprised at the emotions he was undergoing. He did not regard the image with anything at all like a religious feeling. Most emphatically it did not belong to that idea of the Straight or Normal or Wholesome which had, for the last few days, been his support against what he now knew of the innermost circle at Belbury. The horrible vigour of its realism was, indeed, in its own way as remote from that Idea as anything else in the room. That was one source of his reluctance. To insult even a carved image of such agony seemed an abominable act. But it was not the only source. With the introduction of this Christian symbol the whole situation had somehow altered. The thing was becoming incalculable. His simple antithesis of the Normal and the Diseased had obviously failed to take something into account. Why was the crucifix there? Why were more than half the poison-pictures religious? He had the sense of new parties to the conflict – potential allies and enemies which he had not suspected before. “If I take a step in any direction,” he thought, “I may step over a precipice.” A donkey-like determination to plant hoofs and stay still at all costs arose in his mind.
“Pray make haste,” said Frost.
A N00b.
Welcome to FR, if you're not a retread.
Cheers!
Bingo! Line of the day.
No, he did exactly what he should have. Sadly no one joined in the protest of the assignment, or at least no one that was suspended, or cared to comment.
Oh yeh, just try offending the Gay Lobby, or Cair, or any of the other dozen or so lobbies, then come back here and tell us all about free speech.
You apparently don't recognize answer either.
The answer was very much to the point, albeit in the form of a question.
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