Additional e-mail addys of people quoted in the omaha.com article:
prupprecht@westside66.org phutchings@westside66.org
My e-mail to those two (sent Thursday)--
Dear Ms. Rupprecht (cc: P. Hutchings),
Subject: You're Famous Now (re: African-Amercian award)
Your disciplinary action against those who put up posters promoting an African-American student born in South Africa for "African-American Student of the Year" made "Best of the Web," which you can link to from opinionjournal.com, or specifically:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110004584 From the facts as I see them, unless you have rules against postings of any kind regardless of content, you and your school are way out of line. The student in question is African (by birth!) and American (a citizen). By what stretch does encouraging students to support him (it would appear they can't vote themselves) constitute a reason for disciplinary action (again, unless you have rules against postings of any kind)?
Your goal apparently is to ensure that a black student receives the award. I suppose you could "fix" your "problem" by changing the name of the award to Black Student of the Year. Perhaps that's not PC enough--maybe, Person of Color of the Year? Oops, that won't work if you have persons of Oriental descent who excel (immature students like Ms. Tylena Martin might be offended). Black Student of the Year would open up the possibility that someone from the Caribbean might win-can't have that either. Boy, you've got a mess on your hands, don't you?
How about this? Have a Student of the Year, without consideration of skin color, only on accomplishment and content of character (sounds familiar-someone we celebrated a holiday for a couple of days ago was into that idea). What a concept.
Even if the students deserved discipline for unallowed postings, your attitude and your handling of the incident is what is "inappropriate and insensitive" (your quote from the omaha.com article), and your punishment of a person circulating a petition of support is straight from Orwell's Thought Police.
It appears that you've singlehandedly done more to alienate people from each other than any of the students involved ever could. Way to go.
FYI-Tylena Martin was one of the black students quoted in the Omaha.com article saying she was "hurt" and "offended" by the postings.
Great email. Don't you just love it when liberal inconsistencies tie them in knots.