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 ...
The guy objecting is a devout Mormon.
The instructor is yet another affirmative action type.
Or perhaps MLK, Jr. or Obama. I'm guessing the prof would then declare it a hate crime.
“As with any academic lesson, the exercise was meant to encourage students to view issues from many perspectives”
FAIL.
They rejected the students perspective.
“Key section of the article:
“Have the students write the name JESUS in big letters on a piece of paper,” the lesson reads. “Ask the students to stand up and put the paper on the floor in front of them with the name facing up. Ask the students to think about it for a moment. After a brief period of silence instruct them to step on the paper. Most will hesitate. Ask why they can’t step on the paper. Discuss the importance of symbols in culture.”
It seems the Mormon responded the way the lesson anticipated, and therefore his cries of persecution are strange. It is also worth noting that the Professor is writing a book called “Obamamania: The rise of a mythical hero.” Which doesn’t sound positive for Obama.
I would have to get the Professor’s side of the story before I pass any kind of judgment in my mind on the matter. I am thinking that, most likely, the Mormon student overreacted, and made much ado about nothing, since the lesson itself says that refusing to step on it was part of the lesson itself.”
I would submit that a teacher with any common sense at all would appreciate that this exercise would likely be offensive to some, and could modify it to get the same point across without unnecessarily ruffling feathers.
For example, he could have asked the students to write tha name of somebody each one deeply respects, exchange papers with a neighbor, and then stomp away.
This strategy would have achieved a similar outcome (to launce the discussion) without singling out devout members of one particular religion.
better yet, have the punished student bring in an Obama poster for the same exercise and see if his asshat professor thinks that’s “debate”
That's the real issue IMO. Colleges now seem dedicated to indoctrinating students with postmodern critical theory drivel. That sounds like what this brain-dead "professor" was up to.
In most Islamic cultures, the sole of the shoe is used to deliver the ultimate insult. Witness the infamous Baghdad press conference where Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi threw his shoes at President Bush. This exercise was simply an attack on Jesus Christ by one of the gatekeepers of knowledge in America.
It hardly needs to be said that it is highly doubtful that he would have written “Mohammed” on that piece of paper. The irony is that it was done in the context of a class focused on “Intercultural Communications.” Is that really a proper approach to communications between cultures?
John 1:1
It’s the Professor who needs stomping, and the administration that suspended him.
WTF is wrong with these people?
Absolutely!
True, but considering how much money students put into school, I doubt he would have been suspended for normal religious zeal. Most likely he pushed the issue despite the actual goal of the lesson being explained, which justified his initial reaction. Considering what the lesson brief actually says, I find it impossible to think he was suspended because he would not step on it. Rather, he was probably suspended for not listening to reason and being inappropriate.
This week, there has been a controversy in our local papers about a teacher who is under attack by CAIR for a lesson that she taught in school, during a section on bullying.
The teacher mentioned that sometimes bullying can take different forms, that sometimes political special interest groups use bullying tactics to advance a specific agenda. One of the students brought up Hamas and Hezbollah as one such group. The teacher agreed and the class discussed ways that this could happen. Terrorism is a form of bullying.
One of the students went home and told her Muslim father that the teacher called Muslims bullies. The father called CAIR and registered a complaint and it has progressed from there.
Christians do not have such lobby groups and wouldn’t use them if we did. Christians are not bullies. CAIR is an organization that uses bullying tactics.
There's part of the problem right there.
And he's probably taking on $40,000 in debt to study it too!
A lot of colleges have a “diversity” or “pluralism” or “social” requirement. The students are majoring in management or criminal justice or communications or education or nursing but they take throwaway classes like this one to get the pesky requirement out of the way.
>>“spend the remainder of his life on Earth as an attendant at some men’s lavatory in a gay bar!
He probably enjoys tapping his feet in the airport bathroom for the challenge.
>>When are Americans going to say NO?
I took a class at the local community college. I had to do word problems in an algebra class that were anti-white, anti-capitalism. So, I didn’t go back for another class.
Then, I signed up a class at the university. I was told that I had to write a paper (for American History) that explained which parts of the Constitution should be changed (and you know which changes would get an A and which would get a D). I dropped that class in time.
Now, I attend Liberty University Online and the classes are wonderful! The professors are Christian, the curriculum is biblical (even though I am getting an MIS degree).
It costs more, but I will get an education that makes me a better person and not one where I have to hold my nose and conform to their statist, racist, and Un-American BS!
write “0bama” on the paper and instruct everyone to stomp on it...see how that goes
“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.’”
Say what you want about Mormonism’s theology, Mormons are pretty much polite to a fault. I wouldn’t have been as respectful to this “professor” myself.
We are still a capitalistic country. We are free to leave the classroom and walk away.
There is so much whining. Sean Hannity won’t stop whining.
People don’t want to part with one wasted penny.
They don’t want to say, “Geeze, my cousin told me I was an idiot to send my kid to a place called Florida Atlantic university with the biggest concentration of muslim who are there to subvert and the rest are liberal subversives brainwashing my kid I’d better cut my losses and admit my mistake at least secretly”.
No they say, “Geeze, my cousin was right even though I yelled at her thinking that made me right, but I’ve put too much money into this stupid school already, I’ll just let Johnny get brainwashed into hating Christianity/Catholicism because my money is more important, and my friends like this school and I don’t know how to think and make a decision or an independent thought.”
Are we free or not?
Liberty, Hillsdale and other schools or how about now school and getting to work?
These kids are just not being served by their primary educators, their parents. They’re being led by people who don’t care to think nor to teach them how to manage their money.
This is almost word for word from tne C.S.Lewis novel ”That Hideous Strength”, written circa 1955. Very scary.
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