• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

FAU Student Claims He Was Suspended For Refusing To Step On Jesus

Let the teacher teach. If the student has a problem with the professor's methods, he can quietly leave the class (since he's under no obligation to be there) and withdraw from the course. As much as I find the professor's method unprofessional, we have to respect the sovereignty of professors to teach the way they see fit.

I'm also highly suspect of the notion that he was suspended JUST for refusing to do the assignment. Students are under no obligation whatsoever to do these things. I imagine the student made a scene about it, or some other inappropriate behavior that led to this suspension.

I suspect this is the situation also. I can't imagine a professor "suspending" a student for not participating in a class lesson. Indeed, I don't know of any college where professors even have that authority. Professors can flunk a student but not suspend a student. It's a college, not an elementary school, and since students pay, they have procedures for suspension that are pretty rigorous.

The whole thing sounds like a garbled version that popped out of the rightwing noise machine, or at least the lazy mainstream media.
 
I suspect this is the situation also. I can't imagine a professor "suspending" a student for not participating in a class lesson. Indeed, I don't know of any college where professors even have that authority. Professors can flunk a student but not suspend a student. It's a college, not an elementary school, and since students pay, they have procedures for suspension that are pretty rigorous.

The whole thing sounds like a garbled version that popped out of the rightwing noise machine, or at least the lazy mainstream media.

If we're going to get all psychological now I would call what you posed DENIAL..
 
If we're going to get all psychological now I would call what you posed DENIAL..

Don't get involved in fields of knowledge you don't understand.

That said, your response is typical of a certain kind of personality that the obstreperous student apparently has. The professor should have used his refusal to step on a piece of paper as a teaching moment -- it demonstrates the rigidity of certain insecure types whose model of the world is so fragile they can't have it challenged without falling apart.

Psst: by the way, do you have any facts about a professor having the authority to "suspend" college students or are you just blustering.
 
Don't get involved in fields of knowledge you don't understand.

That said, your response is typical of a certain kind of personality that the obstreperous student apparently has. The professor should have used his refusal to step on a piece of paper as a teaching moment -- it demonstrates the rigidity of certain insecure types whose model of the world is so fragile they can't have it challenged without falling apart.

Psst: by the way, do you have any facts about a professor having the authority to "suspend" college students or are you just blustering.

Oh I understand.....

If you cant understand then that is your problem... Go back to your frozen dinners and news papers (the ones you agree with).

People aren't delicate - they're generally selfish and ****ed in the brain and when **** isn't to their liking they go haywire, that or bottle it up over time and explode..

It doesn't take years to realize that...

Anthropology is nice tho.. Sentinelese tribe is interesting to say the least ... I suppose you just learned something new?

Sentinelese people - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Now please psychoanalyze me...
 
To try to make her absurd method point, she could have legally used "Obama" or "mother" to stomp on.

Requiring someone to stop on the name of a person God? And suspending the student for not doing so? Wow, if ever there was a lawsuit for violating separation of church and state - from the pro-religion side - that might be it. Using public funds to have people stomp on their God's name???

COULD YOU IMAGINE IF the teacher had instead had students write "Barack Hussein Obama" on the paper and then to stomp on it?

As for trying to show "the power of words" since only 1 student refused, the professor disproved her point. In addition, the professor - with the suspension - proved the only true power words have concerns punitive censorship by the powers that be.

1. I said the procedure was stupid if it was just as described by the kid. I find it slightly unlikely though. And I highly doubt he was suspended just for not participating. These kinds of stories often get pushed without all the info then week later when all of it comes out, the outraged crowd has already moved on to another topic. You are assuming everything went down exactly as the kid described, which is at best, an uninformed decision on your part. We don't know exactly how it happened.

2. If the teacher had said write "Obama" on a piece of paper, it would have gotten less, or possible even the same coverage, but not some extraordinary amount like you are supposing.
 
I'd throw a chair across the room and say "analyze that."

I love ****ing with those interested in the field of "humanity" (broad field).

Psychology, Anthropology, Sociology is all BS ... There are 7 billion people in the world with 7 billion different personalities..We're not the same...

I generally agree with you on that, though I think throwing a chair across the room would not be the best way to make the point.
 
I generally agree with you on that, though I think throwing a chair across the room would not be the best way to make the point.

No, probably not, the fact that someone reacts so emotionally really says that there's something wrong with them. As far as I'm concerned, a college student is someone who is *PAYING* for the classroom experience, they are not agreeing to be the slave to their professor's whims. If they choose not to participate in a classroom exercise, they should not be penalized so long as they can answer all the questions right on the tests. These are not children (unless you're throwing things around the room), these are adults paying your paycheck.
 
That said, your response is typical of a certain kind of personality that the obstreperous student apparently has.

Yeah? What kind of personality is that? One that holds their own religious views, and refuses to participate in the disgusting exercise?

As my son, whom is in collage as well said, he wouldn't have done that either, then if confronted that he wasn't completing the exercise, he said that he would have been completing it, because if the exercise was to study how cultures react to that, then his reaction is valid.
 
Yeah? What kind of personality is that? One that holds their own religious views, and refuses to participate in the disgusting exercise?

As my son, whom is in collage as well said, he wouldn't have done that either, then if confronted that he wasn't completing the exercise, he said that he would have been completing it, because if the exercise was to study how cultures react to that, then his reaction is valid.

It really works you up, doesn't it?
 
Oh I understand.....

If you cant understand then that is your problem... Go back to your frozen dinners and news papers (the ones you agree with).

People aren't delicate - they're generally selfish and ****ed in the brain and when **** isn't to their liking they go haywire, that or bottle it up over time and explode..

It doesn't take years to realize that...

Anthropology is nice tho.. Sentinelese tribe is interesting to say the least ... I suppose you just learned something new?

Sentinelese people - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Now please psychoanalyze me...

I already have.

Meanwhile, like I say, professors can't "suspend" college students, so somebody floated a fake story (probably the obstreperous student).

In any case, the exercise made its point. Some people (conservatives and fundies) think a name on a piece of paper is person -- how does one explain that level of delusion?
 
Why would a progressive do that?


Rich white people worship Jesus and poor brown people worship Muhammad...

You may as well attempt to instruct a progressive to say something negative about Obama - they wont and will bash Bush... To a progressive Jesus didn't exist or is some sort of horrible image of "white redneck culture."

That's the way it is.

So if I wrote " Obama" on a piece of paper and then " stepped on it" I would be a homophobic, xenophobic, racist, anti-semite, Muslim Hatin "Mericun" ?

But stepping on a folded up piece of paper with the name " Jesus on it makes me thoughtful, educated and sophisticated.

Got it.

I would have just written Jesus on it and then added " Garcia" and that way I'm in the clear.
 
Thanks for that Ditto....Now to those that were jumping off saying that maybe the kid was a bully, or maybe the student acted out inappropriately or the like...What say you now that the University is apologizing for the assignment? I don't think if it were the students fault that the University would be apologizing....

Not necessarily. Even though the assignment should never have been in the first place does not automatically mean that the student didn't do something wrong. Not making a stand per se' on what happened. Just noting that you have a bad logic line going on here.

As for me, had I been in that class, I would have said to the instructor, "I'll write 'Jesus' on a piece of paper and grind it under my heal, and even put it up on YouTube, if you first throw a Koran on the floor and grind it under your heal and put it up on YouTube."
 
I already have.


Meanwhile, like I say, professors can't "suspend" college students, so somebody floated a fake story (probably the obstreperous student).

In any case, the exercise made its point. Some people (conservatives and fundies) think a name on a piece of paper is person -- how does one explain that level of delusion?

Then you personally wouldn't have a problem stepping on a piece of paper PUBLICLY with the name Muhammed written on it ?
 
The fact that an apology was issued proves that the university has a rightwing bias which they rigidly enforce

The fact that this story got into the rightwing blogosphere, in a garbled fashion of course (that's the only way the rightwing noise machine works) is because it's being used as part of the conservative attack on liberal education, academic freedom, and intellectual inquiry.

The right deeply hates America's colleges and the freedom on inquiry they uphold, so it is part of the rightwing agenda to attack and destroy academic freedom. That's why the leeched onto this "story". And in fact, that's the real story -- the continuing rightwing attack on academic freedom. The boy who thought a piece of paper was really Jesus needs to grow up.
 
Then you personally wouldn't have a problem stepping on a piece of paper PUBLICLY with the name Muhammed written on it ?

Nope. I'd even step on a piece of paper with FENTON on it. But it's telling that you'd ask.

Poor conservatives: they can't seem to tell the difference between words and things.
 
Nope. I'd even step on a piece of paper with FENTON on it. But it's telling that you'd ask.

Poor conservatives: they can't seem to tell the difference between words and things.

Did you have an issue with the Muslims who got in an uproar over the artist that did a carticure (sp) of Muhammed?
 
College professors are always coming up with "controversial" experiments: The question here is whether stepping on the written word "Jesus" is officially considered a form of religious desecration within the said student's form of Christianity...............
 
College professors are always coming up with "controversial" experiments: The question here is whether stepping on the written word "Jesus" is officially considered a form of religious desecration within the said student's form of Christianity...............

Yes, and in that case, the student should have said so, and I suspect it would have been an interesting heuristic moment, if the professor was a good teacher. The insistence by the student not to step on a piece of paper makes the point wonderfully (and he had every right not to engage in that action -- professors can't force students to engage in an action).

Now if the professor got all bent out of shape over that, instead of seeing his point made, then he is to blame, not the student. But I suspect the kid caused a scene.
 
Yes, and in that case, the student should have said so, and I suspect it would have been an interesting heuristic moment, if the professor was a good teacher. The insistence by the student not to step on a piece of paper makes the point wonderfully (and he had every right not to engage in that action -- professors can't force students to engage in an action).

Now if the professor got all bent out of shape over that, instead of seeing his point made, then he is to blame, not the student. But I suspect the kid caused a scene.

I think so too, because the idea that Jesus CAN be desecrated by such an act is alien to most historical Christian thought................
 
Yeah, they're stupid. Why do you ask?

Just checking for consitancy. There are many who claim the Muslims justified in their anger but would claim this student as overreacting.
 
Back
Top Bottom