Christmas is just 30 days away, but Santa Claus won’t be stopping by Florida Gulf Coast University this holiday. He’s not allowed on campus.
FGCU administration has banned all holiday decorations from common spaces on campus and canceled a popular greeting card design contest, which is being replaced by an ugly sweater competition. In Griffin Hall, the university’s giving tree for needy preschoolers has been transformed into a “giving garden.” The moves boil down to political correctness.
“Public institutions, including FGCU, often struggle with how best to observe the season in ways that honor and respect all traditions,” President Wilson Bradshaw wrote in a memo to faculty and staff Thursday. “This is a challenging issue each year at FGCU, and 2008 is no exception. While it may appear at times that a vocal majority of opinion is the only view that is held, this is not always the case.”
“It says people are very passionate about this,” said council president Ruth Rodrigues, who also is director of auxiliary services. “The holidays are a joyous time, and they want to express themselves.” In 2001, then-President William Merwin lit the university’s official Christmas tree, a 22-foot Colorado blue spruce. Children from the college’s child care center and university choir performed traditional carols.
“I think they’re pretty,” said Lerner, who is Jewish. “It’s just a Christmas tree. I don’t mind.”
Is it too early for politically correct Christmas stories?
“FGCU administration has banned all holiday decorations from common spaces on campus and canceled a popular greeting card design contest,”
Why are idiots running colleges?
“Why are idiots running colleges?”
What else do you do with a university degree? You can’t do anything useful with most degrees (surely there must be a useful degree… I can’t think of any, but there must be) so all they really entitle you do to is teach, consult, and otherwise get in the way of people who can actually do something useful …
How does that saying go?
Those who can’t, teach;
those who can’t teach consult.
Ain’t change from a White Man’s entitled society a bitch?
I say celebrate all of them. How are we supposed to learn about other cultures and they learn about ours if we just pretend like these special occasions don’t exist? If a group wants to deck the halls with red, green, and black for Kwanzaa go for it. If a group wants to put up menorahs and do whatever it is they do with dreidels, great. I think everyone should celebrate all of them. Any excuse to get together and have a good time is good. I think it’s something we need more of.
#3 – Bobboscrutable
>>Ain’t change from a White Man’s entitled
>>society a bitch?
wtf does that mean? You’ve made some inscrutable comments in the past, but this one is right at the top of the list.
Are you dipping into the nog a little bit early?
Mustard—hmmm, eggnog. Made my first one two days ago. Good stuff.
Well, I won’t play your game without a bit more effort on your part. Give me 2 examples of what I could possibly mean and I’ll respond with the dogmatic often stated details you currently are too lazy to conjure.
# 4 BlackCat40 said, “I say celebrate all of them.”
At least that would be interesting.
#6 – Bobbolina
I have no fucking idea what you could mean. Anything I try to imagine as “meaning” in that post makes no sense at all in this context. I suppose it’s more of your “anything that has anything whatsoever to do with something may, in the most trivial sense, be related to religion must be the evil spawn of Satan”.
But I’m just guessing, based on the topic of the thread. Not on anything you wrote. What you wrote might as well be in Aramaic, for all the sense it makes to modern readers.
Ain’t change from a White Man’s entitled society a bitch?
There you have it folks. People are agressively hostile towards certain races and certain cultures. But do show they show disregard for other cultures and traditions? Not usually.
And this despite the fact that they choose to enter these societies and take all the benefits that arise therefrom.
You are just being taken if you think they will give you the same respect they demand once they are in power.
Or why not keep the State out of the religion business?
Separation of church and state. AKA==freedom.
Nice dodge though to suggest worshipping all religions so that the favored one (Mustard==the white mans religion aka “christianity”) can get 99% of the tax dollars.
Santa Claus, Christmas trees, Gifts, shiny lights, commerce and joy are not particularly christian things.
Or religious in any other way for that matter.
The only thing not so politically correct is the occasion for all this. Some obscure birth story.
Ban all christian references please, it’s not good for kids anyway.
But why not celebrate the long winter nights and holiday season in the traditional secular way all people do?
I mean, school is not about not having fun.
I went to this school. I hated it. They don’t do ANYTHING normally there. And once again Florida makes the news for being asinine.
# 10 bobbo said, “Or why not keep the State out of the religion business?
Separation of church and state.”
Sure, just as soon as you show us all where in the Constitution it says that… 😉
Until then, gov’t shouldn’t be making regulations regarding the establishment of religion…
#13–Paddy-O-Dumbo==THATS your response? Mustard is right====HAW!!!!
What a paucity of context. What does the first Amendment mean? The Supreme Court interprets and provides the details missing from the “framework” of the Constitution.
Silly man.
#10 – Bobbomaniac
>>(Mustard==the white mans religion aka
>>“christianity”)
Now you’re really losing it, son. Christianity was not just the religion of 100% of the pasty-white Founding Fathers, it’s also the religion of the vast majority of African Americans.
If you have a point to make with your posts, I’m afraid that you’ve lost most readers by this point.
Maybe better to just say what you’ve got to say, rather than try and dazzle us with your Platonic dialogs and Aristotelian logic, eh?
#8–Mustard==the spawn of Satan is evil!!!, but I didn’t want to start another anti-repuglican rant.
So wise you are.
‘dro, you REALLY must have too much time on your hands. You never comment on the topic of the thread; you only throw out 3rd-grade quality raspberries at posters, most of which don’t make any sense.
Isn’t there anything going on in Kuzcoland to get you to stop fixating on me?
You want a tree, put up a tree, in your own house. Relax, have a smoke, smug in the confidence that your tradition will not die. When there’s talk of not allowing you to put up a tree in your house, then you can go justifiably nuts. Until then, don’t worry so much. I’m sure there’ll be public Christmas decorations and plenty of ’em, right up until the day Jesus starts hangin’ out with Zeus and the rest of that crowd. Probably even past that. I mean, trees and mistletoe are still around even after the pagan mumbo jumbo bit the dust. Maybe the Scientologists will keep the tradition going well into the next century. I hope so. I think Christmas trees are pretty, especially those aluminum ones from the sixties.
Season’s Greetings, y’all!
why you don’t allow religious displays in three easy steps
Cincinnati, OH in the 1990’s (look it up)
1.) city council allows nativity scene on city center square
2.) local jewish community requests menorah, city council okays request.
3.) kkk shows up with cross, city has no choice but to allow it, having granted permission to two other religions.
so, um, yeah. there ya go. bad apples ruin it for everybody.
if you blame the jews or the atheists, not only did you miss the point, you should probably head down to your local klan office and sign up.
School president decided to back off holiday decoration ban!
http://www.nbc-2.com/Articles/readarticle.asp?articleid=23475&z=14
OK, back to the topic. Why do universities spin off into craziness? My theory, after being enrolled or working in universities for 25 years, is that isolation from a diversity of opinions creates inbreeding.
A typical college department or classroom has no real political diversity. My students who are conservative will only speak about their opinions to me in my office. Students are routinely persecuted for espousing middle of the road opinions.
As a student, even in non-political classes, like calculus, I was routinely subjected to a list of rallies for causes. The professor would caution us that he would be there to see who showed up and who didn’t. This was in the 1980’s. I can only imagine the coercion goes on today. (Well I do hear stories).
Regardless: “Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.” – Walter Lippmann
#23 Great Quote and oh so true.
It amazes me that in the name of political correctness most pc crazies are not. How is honoring, celebrating. enjoying a holiday or tradition for one culture religion disparage other cultures and religions? Think about it. Who is being politically incorrect?
Anyone who thinks a “Giving Tree” has anything to do with Christ or Christianity is just too fucking stupid to live.
#21 – Grog
Putting up a nativity scene on public property in the town square is one thing. But college “common areas”? Christ, they’ve already got Metallica posters and adverts for Hannah Montana and recruitment posters for NORML. A “greeting card design contest” is some kind of religious rite, that has to be replaced with an “ugly sweater contest”?
“While it may appear at times that a vocal majority of opinion is the only view that is held, this is not always the case.”
“Vocal majority”? Is the guy trying to say that a majority of students at FGCU objected to the “giving tree” and the greeting card design contest? Christ. What is it, a hotbed of militant Atheism? Those kids must go berserk when they go into a Wal*Mart or a Target.
#36 – ‘dro
>>What’s the tree giving?
I heard it’s giving blow jobs. Why don’t you stick your pecker in the branches, and let us know how it is?
pointless.
i’m agnostic, i guess, (even though i pretty much despise religion, esp christian type) -but i much prefer what i believe is one of America’s (hyperconsumers esp) favorite tradition.
the tree should be kept. all those offended by this should grow a friggen spine.
this probably has in (large?) part, something to do with pressure applied from those who provide funding/donations to the school. -and ofc, the mass brainwashing of “tolerance” at colleges in general.
-can’t wait to see the what further mass dumbing down of America’s educational system is foisted upon us with the new administration’s “improvement” plans.
ex: here in NYC, they are now trying to change the rules/criteria for “gifted children” schools.
currently those in the 90 percentile or better get in. they want to change it to the “top 10%”
-s
#13, Cow-Paddy, Ignorant Shit Talking Sociopath and former Mall Rent-A-Cop,
Separation of church and state.”
Sure, just as soon as you show us all where in the Constitution it says that…
So the Constitutional expert needs someone else to show him where it says that in the Constitution. Get a life and then do a little research. Geeze, I bet Sarah Palin is smarter than you.
#16, peehead,
Stroke patients are so sad.
No. Those who don’t understand their illness are the sad ones.
It’s disheartening to see them struggle to explain something and they’re just out of words.
Again no. Why don’t you look it up and find out something about strokes before you start looking like the impassioned idiot you are.
So how is Cuba since that last Hurricane?