Posted on 12/10/2001 2:21:01 PM PST by Michael2001
SEMINOLE -- It started simply enough, said officials at the VA Medical Center at Bay Pines.
The fake Christmas spruce was set up inside the hospital's main lobby with its traditional tree-topper Monday. That day, complaints came in to the Equal Employment Opportunity office questioning management's stance on diversity and religious tolerance.
What followed was a whirlwind of rumors, bruised feelings and a dethroned Christmas tree angel who will end her reign locked in a secretary's cabinet.
"Everything got really heated up, it's all over the hospital," said union president Yancy L. Dorn, a 40-year employee.
Officials said the brouhaha began when several African-American employees protested the use of the hospital's traditional auburn-haired, white angel.
"They were just concerned that in this day and time with everything going on in the world (that) management would do better and put up something more diverse than a white angel," said Joan Harris, Bay Pines Equal Employment Opportunity manager.
Her office presented the concerns to Bay Pines director Thomas Weaver, who directed workers to remove the offending cherub.
On Tuesday the angel came down and word went out to 2,100 employees throughout the complex's buildings to remove or delay setting up their seraphs.
The news did not go over well.
"There was lots of uproar," said hospital spokesman Larry Christman, who noted he was "out of the loop" during the decision-making process and much of its aftermath.
Talk circulated that the offended workers were Muslim, further aggravating some volunteers and staff who said they are in the midst of a remodeling project to relocate an existing mosque for the hospital's dozen or so Muslims to a first-floor area.
The employees who approached her office were not Muslim, but Christian, Harris said.
Regardless, several employees contacted U.S. Rep. C.W. Bill Young, R-Largo, with complaints about Muslims, officials revealed. Petitions were organized and Dorn said he has had a flood of phone calls demanding union action on the angel issue.
"You've got some upset veterans and employees that work here, you've got some upset volunteers," said Dorn, adding that the move to scrap the 2-year-old white angel also was made without consulting him.
Weaver, the Bay Pines director, was out of town Wednesday when the controversy escalated and Dorn is set to meet with him early this morning.
In the meantime -- at least in the main lobby -- a faceless gold angel took over as tree-topper in the early morning hours Wednesday.
"This was a horrible experience," said Harris, expressing her hope that everyone will re-examine workplace diversity and let it unite rather than divide them.
"It put a sour taste in people's mouths ... but sometimes for every bad comes a good. That's what the holiday season is about."
You'd get in big trouble at least. Fired, probably. Charged with a hate crime, possibly.
Do you think it would get taken down?
No, never.
Do you think I would get called a racist?
At least. At the very least.
Gee, sounds like a double standard doesn't it?
"This was a horrible experience," said Harris, expressing her hope that everyone will re-examine workplace diversity and let it unite rather than divide them.
Ms. Harris, you idiot, you are looking for the “workplace diversity” agenda to do something it was never intended to do.
It is functioning exactly as intended in your hospital.
Yep, you'd be called a 'rascist' faster than HR could sentence you to 'sensitivity training.'
It's quite obvious that the complaining employees are Christians, not in any real sense of the word, anyhow. I wonder if they're Farrakhan's thugs who've figured out a way to restrict the Christian message?
Peter Cottontail better plan on kissing Al Sharpton's ring first if he's planning to show up anywhere around this soon-to-be-God-forsaken place!
But you were right on with the sentiment!
Sorry, but they died many, many years ago. Might I suggest that your quote be updated to "Whoever SUPPORTS the PC movement should be taken out at high noon and shot. IMHO."
Just a thought.
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