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Friday, November 10, 2006

University Settles With Christian Student Who Objected to Social-Work Assignment

[OK - just a quick preface to this rant.. some of you know me as sweet mild mannered me, not one for confrentation or arguing - mostly because its never worth it - and I realize that lately my blogs have been rants of some sort. Its seems to be my blog trigger for this month - must rant, must blog. So here we go, but rest assured some day I'll blog on something trival and it will leave you feeling empty - because you secretly love my rants. ]

I first read the above headline in an email newsletter I get through work, a paid subscription specifically designed for all of upper education across the country. It caught my eye as I scanned down the email, great another whining Christian making us all look bad. After all "University Settles With Christian Student Who Objected to Social-Work Assignment" sounds like a Christian didn't want to do some kind of community service/work related assignment, something that any reasonable student would do and this stupid sap was hiding behind his/her religious beliefs to get out of the work. Right? That's how I read the headline... seems a reasonable assumption to me.

With some chagrin I clicked the headline to see the story (click here) and it turns out that the student had problems after declining to sign a letter to the Missouri state legislature "the assistant professor who directed her undergraduate social-work program, had accused her of violating the university’s Standards of Essential Functioning in Social Work Education after she refused to sign her name to a letter her entire class had written to the Missouri Legislature in support of homosexual adoption." Well come on now, that's a totally reasonable thing to decline to participate in - good grief! The girl did the right thing and should have been allowed to do so without penalty, I'm glad she's taken action, hopefully it will help all who participate in the program in the future.

I looked over the rest of the story and noticed the word "attacked" in reference to "several conservative groups". I'm so tired of news not actually being news, but being opinion tucked in and trimmed around details. Any time I read the newspaper, any publication really, I find my self reading defensively, having to pull out the meat of the story from the opinion, purposefully ignoring over half the article so I can actully figure out what happened.

Defensive reading skill courses coming to a school near you!

posted by Heather @ 7:47 AM

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