A student at Florida Atlantic University was directed by a professor to stomp on a piece of paper with the word “Jesus” written on it. The university is arguing that it was all done in the name of “debate.” So when the young man, a Mormon, complained he was immediately suspended from the class. That sounds like debate, right?
Fox News’ Todd Starnes reports:
“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.
Starnes
points out that the professor authored a book titled, “Obamamania: The Rise of a Mythical Hero.”
I wonder if in the next class they’ll stomp on his book.
March 21, 2013 at 9:30 pm
Must be a Catholic school like Notre Dame (irony, but, sadly, maybe not so much irony).
March 21, 2013 at 10:01 pm
I would have written the Professors name and stomped on that instead.
March 21, 2013 at 10:20 pm
I am sure the professor would have had a hissy fit if they wrote Obama's name on the piece of paper and stomp on it, crying right-wing fascist racists.
March 21, 2013 at 10:53 pm
Write: Obama on one. Or: Mohammed.
Exactly. More people need to learn the subtle resistance we're talking about here.
March 21, 2013 at 11:00 pm
I wonder what the reaction would have been if the prof would have ordered the students to genuflect in reverence before the Holy Name instead if stomping on it. I'm doubting those students that refused would have been suspended.
March 21, 2013 at 11:38 pm
@Nathan, no the Prof would have been disciplined.
March 21, 2013 at 11:45 pm
Oh dear God, this professor is an idiot. The point of the lesson is that you DON'T STOMP ON IT. It's a class about intercultural communication, and the point of the lesson is how we should avoid desecrating symbols that are seen as sacred to others.
March 22, 2013 at 12:48 am
I think the point of "inter cultural communication is to rid one of any identification with Judeo-Christian culture (particularly morality) and inculcate indifferentism.
March 21, 2013 at 11:51 pm
Yet more proof that sin makes people stupid.
March 22, 2013 at 12:13 am
As an overeducated redneck teaching in higher education, I would have advised the student to step on the professor – or let me do it, since I'm faculty. I'm not a fan of Dan Brown, but this is clearly a case where an order of homicidal albino monks would really have come in handy.
March 22, 2013 at 12:32 am
How sad. Lord have mercy on us all.
March 22, 2013 at 12:32 am
How sad. Lord have mercy on us all.
March 22, 2013 at 12:54 am
If you have ever read "That Hideous Strength" by C. S. Lewis, there is a scene in the book where one of the characters is asked to stomp on an image of a crucifix. It was all about breaking down his moral boundaries. Naturally.
March 22, 2013 at 1:30 am
As an academic I am embarrassed at what "higher Ed" has become. This isn't enlightening. This isn't a liberal arts and sciences education (although the word liberal now means all this inconsistent silliness, but that isn't how it originally was). It's the very oppressive mindset that the political left claim is being used on them. Yet they are the main offenders.
March 22, 2013 at 1:46 am
Thank you for posting this. I now have a story that I can share with my students as they present their persuasive speeches for or against any one of the first 10 amendments to the constitution. If they have no ideas of their own, I will ask them to speak about this! In my own department one of my colleagues told his students that religious support for an argument is unacceptable. He just wiped out thousands of years of human thought! The arrogance! AAAAARGH!
March 22, 2013 at 6:22 am
The Japanese novelist Shusaku Endo wrote in his work "Silence" about how Japanese Christians in the 1600s were required to tread on a "fumie" image of Jesus and Mary. The analogy is striking.
March 22, 2013 at 9:38 am
I hope the Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly the Alluance Defense Fund) gets involved. They have a marvelous record winning cases like this. Decades ago I gave money to the ACLU…. Now I contribute to the ADF instead.
March 22, 2013 at 12:05 pm
FL Atlantic also expelled a Christian group because it would not accept non-Christian leaders. This is a progressivist liberal (intolerant, bigotted) campus. PC really means Punitive Conformity = You will think, say, believe what we want you to or else.
Hannah S.
March 22, 2013 at 12:30 pm
@Hannah, just look what's happening to the Boy Scouts if you want to see bigotry against Christian organizations in action 🙁
March 22, 2013 at 4:49 pm
I have little use for Mormonism but this kid is the hero of the day.
March 22, 2013 at 7:00 pm
No disclaimer needed…this young man is indeed the hero of the day.