Hat tip Campus Reform 
"Daddy, what's a seawolf?"
( I've heard of sea horses, but I have never heard of a seawolf.)
It gets more and more outrageous on our campuses. Add Sonoma State College, a public college in California, to the long list of colleges so afraid that they might "offend" someone. A student worker at an orientation fair was told by her supervisor to remove her cross because it might offend someone. Campus Reform has the report.
http://www.campusreform.org/blog/?ID=4821
Is it not amazing that the greatest idiocy in our country takes place right on the campuses of our institutions of higher learning?
Seawolves! How fitting for an institution living in a world of its own!
I know that I would not last too long in the current campus environment. First, I would be replying to those idiot instructors that they need to go back to elementary school to learn the Constitution. That would come after making a choice among prized slurs, such as: "Kiss my *ss", "ESAD", "bite me", or the use of a "middle finger salute". The next step would be a delivery from a Marshal of a law suit, depriving me of U.S. Constitutional rights to freedom of religion. No apology will do, as the Instructor(s) knew exactly what he or she was doing. Do they know what: "Don't Tread on Me" means?.
ReplyDeleteSquid
The employee should sue. She might even get the ACLU to take the case. But whether they will or not, she should sue.
ReplyDeleteThe university would have to have viewpoint-neutral regulations, e.g. banning all symbolic jewelry, in order for this to stand. Chances are, their legal staff will advise the administrator to tell the supervisor to inform the employee that the supervisor made a gross error of judgment and the employee can wear her cross any time.
Further, even if there is a viewpoint-neutral regulation, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, although not so far-reaching as the Freedom of Religion Restoration Act (both sponsored by Sens. Edward Kennedy and Orrin Hatch -- the latter overturned insofar as it applies to the states by the Rehnquist Court) might require the university to show a compelling state interest in order to infringe on specifically religious expression.
As far as simple freedom of expression is concerned, not the religion angle, it is possible that the university would also have to permit an employee to wear jewelry with a graceful swastika on it. But it might be an Indian employee with the same swastika that appears on Gandhi's tomb.